Kinslayer (51 page)

“My honorable Daimyo Hiro is content to let the Guild into his bedchambers?”

“Apparently so.”

She watched the device ticking across the rooftop of a crumbling store shed, a windup key spinning upon its back. Glancing around, she saw several others, tiny red lights hiding in the shadows of lean-to warehouses or storm drains, silver limbs rippling.

“The Guild has done much for my cousin,” Ichizo murmured. “Returned the arm that the Impure assassin took away. Given him the power to seize the Four Thrones. But Yoritomo-no-miya’s old guard warned against tying ourselves too closely to the Guild. As time wears on, I wonder if there was wisdom in old men’s voices.” He ran one hand over his neck. “At least the Guild keep their spies in the open, I suppose. Not hidden in shadows.”

She glanced at him, trying to read his features. His voice was low and measured, tinged with metal within his breather, but she swore she caught a hint of emphasis on the word “shadows.”

“Do you think my cousin will make a good Shōgun, Michi-chan?”

Michi blinked, attention sharpening at the question. She looked around—the jubilant crowd, the soldiers just a shouted order away. Maybe this was where it happened: here in public, right on this boardwalk. Where the viper bared its fangs to strike.

“My Lord?”

“Hiro-sama.” Ichizo nodded toward the approaching procession. “Do you think he will make a good ruler?”

“It does not matter what I think.” She turned her eyes to the floor, trying to appear embarrassed. “I am not worthy to judge.”

“But you have made a judgment nevertheless. That is only human. You knew him briefly, when he courted the Kitsune girl. How did he strike you? As a fair man? Balanced?”

“He was Kazumitsu Elite. His honor was impeccable, his conduct above reproach.”

They stood in silence for a long time, listening to the crackling music, the fireworks popping anew, the percussion of the approaching legion. Ichizo was staring at her, but she refused to meet his eyes, to show any kind of strength. If this was a play, she didn’t quite know what to make of it. He spoke again, his voice so low she could barely hear.

“When we were children, Hiro and I would play soldiers. Fighting side by side against the gaijin hordes or demons from the Yomi underworld. It was all either of us wanted to do: defend the throne. Preserve the might of the Shōgunate.” He glanced at the Daimyo of the Dragon and Phoenix clans, their gathered entourages. “But never once, not in all the times we played, did we imagine our enemies would be our own people.”

She kept her face still. Breathing steady. Wondering what shape her end would take. How far she would get before they cut her down …

“Do you have something to tell me, Michi-chan?”

She licked her lips. Just once. Finally met his stare.

“My Lord?”

“I want you to trust me.” He put his hand on her arm as the noise of the crowd swelled. “I want you to know you can tell me anything.”

Of course you do.

“If you hide things from me, I can’t protect you.”

“Protect me from what?”

“Yourself.”

So here it is. He must suspect something. Perhaps he’d heard her as she stole his keys. Perhaps one of those accursed Guild machines had been spying in her bedroom ceiling or through her window. She was in danger. No One was in danger.
Aisha
was in danger …

Thoughts of personal peril vanished as Hiro’s motorcade pulled to a creaking stop at the boardwalk’s edge. The final vehicle in the row of motor-rickshaws was a large palanquin on rolling tank tracks, its hull fashioned to resemble a snarling horde of golden tigers. Atop their backs in a massive, ornate love seat were propped the couple of the hour. Lord Tora Hiro was resplendent in his bone-white ō-yoroi armor, face covered by a snarling tiger helm, his clockwork arm held up to the cheering crowd. But it was not the would-be Shōgun of the nation who caught Michi’s attention, held her transfixed, sent a fierce pride swelling in her breast.

Yoritomo-no-miya had discovered his sister’s treachery in the hours before his assassination, and in his rage, had beaten the First Daughter near to death. And yet, here she was. Looking out over her people. Still breathing while her brother’s ashes filled a tomb beneath the palace. Such strength. The strength to defy every impulse within her, to rise up from a place of luxury and privilege and recognize the suffering of the people beyond the palace walls. To strive for something better. The strength to say no.

“Aisha,” Michi whispered.

The First Daughter was a beauty from the pages of poets, a woman wrought of alabaster and fine black silk. Her face powdered pearl-white, deep smears of kohl accentuating knowing eyes. A tiger-maw breather covered the lower half of her face, her hair bound into elaborate braids, pierced with gold. Her gown was scarlet, embroidered with a rippling pattern of lotus blooms and prowling tigers, rising into a high throat and an elaborate choker of gold and jewels. Hiro held her hand, fingers entwined, lifting it to the cheering crowd. Though the boy Daimyo might be a pretender, Kazumitsu’s blood flowed in Aisha’s veins. She was the last remnant of a mighty dynasty, a living link to Shima’s glorious past. The people loved her for it.

She sat poised, immaculate, still as midnight, her eyes roaming her adoring public and twinkling with firecracker light. Her seat was surrounded by Guildsmen of a breed Michi had seldom seen before—wasp-waisted women with long, insectoid limbs made of chrome at their backs. Their eyes glowed red, mechabacii chittering on their chests.

Hiro released his fiancée’s hand, stepped down off the palanquin, surrounded by a sea of his white-clad Iron Samurai. As one, the crowd sank to their knees. The Daimyo of the Phoenix and Dragon stepped forward, bowed low, first to Lady Aisha, then to her betrothed. Hiro covered his fist, returned the bow.

“Noble Daimyo Haruka-san, Shin-san, Shou-san,” Hiro said. “My fiancée, the First Daughter of Kazumitsu, and I bid you welcome to Kigen, and extend our humble thanks for your attendance at our wedding celebrations.”

Haruka gave a gruff nod. Shin spoke then, his voice soft and sweet as fresh plums.

“Daimyo Hiro. Ours hearts are gladdened. We had heard rumor you had gained the support of the Kazumitsu Elite…”

Shou glanced at the Iron Samurai, picking up his brother’s trailing sentence. “… but we could scarce believe it.”

“And why is that, honorable Shou-san?”

“In truth, noble Hiro-san,” Shin replied, “we expected every one of them would have committed seppuku to restore their honor after their Shōgun was slaughtered by a common-born girlchild.”

A sudden hush fell over the crowd, heavy as stone, uneasy murmurs rippling at the periphery. Bushimen glanced at each other in the ringing silence, the
click-clack
of dozens of mechabacii filling the void. Shateigashira Kensai stepped forward, arms folded, his voice that of a hundred dying lotusflies.

“Shin-san,” the Second Bloom said. “You shame our host. And his bride to be.”

“No disrespect is intended, Second Bloom.” Shou bowed. “Especially to First Daughter.”

“Perhaps we simply do things differently in the west,” Shin said. “If our Elite guard had stood idle as a teenager snuffed us out like candles, there is not a man among them who would not willingly suffer the cross-shaped cut to their bellies…”

Daimyo Haruka drummed his fingers on his chainkatana hilt. “Shin-san…”

“Noble Daimyo Shin is quite correct,” Hiro said, his voice flat and cold.

The twin Daimyo of the Phoenix clan blinked slowly.

“You agree?” Shou asked.

Hiro nodded. “Each of these men, every man who wore the golden jin-haori as Yoritomo was murdered, suffers the stain of unendurable disgrace. As do I. But to restore the honor of the Kazumitsu line, we have chosen to endure the unendurable.”

Hiro reached up and unbuckled the mempō covering his face. As he pulled the mask away, the crowd gasped, stared in openmouthed horror at their Lord. Michi’s hand sought Ichizo’s, clasped it tight.

The Daimyo had painted his face with ashes.

A thick white pall covered his features, clung to his eyelashes, like the face of a corpse before it was assigned to the pyre. He glared at the assembled Daimyo as his Elite removed their helms, revealing faces as white and ash-streaked as their Lord’s. Michi felt a cold fear in her gut at the sacrilege—an instinctive revulsion at the perversion of traditional funeral rites.

“Honorable Daimyo,” Haruka growled. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Of what do you speak, Haruka-san?”

“To paint the faces of living men with ashes is to invite the deepest misfortune,” the Dragon clanlord replied. “This is a practice reserved for corpses. It will bring death’s touch to the ones so marked.”

“But we
are
dead.”

“… Daimyo?”

“Every samurai in the Kazumitsu Elite has disgraced himself for allowing his Shōgun to perish. As our noble Phoenix cousins have said, we should already have committed seppuku. But first we must turn our blades to the execution of she who laid noble Yoritomo low.”

He stared at the other clanlords, toxic wind whipping hair about his ashen face.

“Therefore, we have consigned our souls to Enma-ō. Burned our offerings of wooden coin and incense to the Judge of all the Hells, begged him to weigh us fairly, and painted our faces with the ashes left behind. As is the way with any dead man.

“We are the Shikabane.” He eyes were dark jade against ashen white. “We are the Corpses.”

Michi watched the clanlords glance at each other, uncertain. Perhaps even fearful. All the pretense of their grand entrances stripped away, left naked before those burning green eyes.

“I wish to be clear upon this.” Hiro’s gaze flickered from one Daimyo to the next. “I will honor our fallen Shōgun. I will marry Lady Aisha, sire a new heir to the Kazumitsu line, see this nation’s future assured. But once this duty is served, I will set about hunting and executing Yoritomo’s assassin and all who abet her. I will serve this nation as Shōgun until the Impure whore, Kitsune Yukiko, is dead.”

Hiro blinked like a man who had forgotten how.

“Your oaths bind you to the Kazumitsu house. Once my beloved and I are wed, I will be as a son of that noble line. And
my
sons shall carry the name into this nation’s future. So know this…”

Hiro replaced his mempō, covering his ashen features. The iron face of a bone-white tiger snarled at the nobles, and the voice within was the ringing of footfalls in an empty tomb.

“If you choose to dishonor your vows and stand against me, I will kill your families. Your wives. Your sons. I will kill your neighbors, your servants, your childhood friends. I will burn your cities to the ground, sow your fields with salt, make a desolation of everything you know and care for. And at the last, when all you love is ashes, I will kill you.”

Silence. Soft as baby’s breath.

“Now.” Hiro gestured with his clockwork arm to the palace glowering on the hill. “I believe welcome drinks are being served in the dining hall.”

Ichizo’s hand was back on Michi’s arm. She tried not to stiffen at his touch.

“I should return you to your room.”

“If that is your wish, my Lord.”

There was no anger in his voice as he spoke. “Do you think me a fool, Michi-chan?”

She looked into his eyes then, gleaming above coiled breather pipes. Were they the eyes of a serpent, toying with its prey? Or the eyes of a loyal man, torn by duty to Lord and heart?

Who are you?

“No,” she said. “I do not think you are a fool, my Lord.”

Ichizo looked at the Tiger Daimyo, climbing back into the palanquin, taking his fiancée by the hand. The faces of the shocked crowd, pale and drawn and stricken with fear. The faces of the Dragon and Phoenix entourages, all bluster and pomp evaporated, taking their seats in the motorcade, silent as berated children. The faces of the Iron Samurai, caked thick with funeral ashes. And the face of Lord Hiro, a walking dead man, only a heartbeat away from dominion over the entire Imperium. His cousin. His blood. His Shōgun.

Ichizo’s face was as pale as his Lord’s.

“I think perhaps we both are.”

*   *   *

She had hated Aisha at first. From the very core of her soul. Here was a woman who had everything. Born to privilege and power. Spoiled by her parents, indulged by her brutish pig of a brother, never lifting a finger all the days of her life.

Months had passed after Michi arrived from the Iishi. There was no hint of the Kagé fighter supposedly dwelling behind the First Daughter’s facade, and the pair were never alone long enough to speak. She would occasionally catch Aisha’s eyes, stare with unspoken questions, but there was nothing in the woman’s face that might betray her. If she was playing a part, Aisha would have put the greatest actors in the Shōgunate to shame.

Michi kept her head down, worked hard, fortunate enough to avoid Shōgun Yoritomo’s advances in the shadow of prettier, more cultured ladies in Aisha’s company. Yoritomo-no-miya seemed to take pleasure in deflowering the First Daughter’s retinue, and for her part, Aisha seemed perfectly content to whore her ladies out to her brother whenever the mood struck him. She was a harsh mistress, temper flaring over the slightest foible—especially in front of her brother, who relished her cruelty. And Michi found the hatred inside her turning to poison.

Why had the Kagé sent her here? There was no more rebellion in this woman’s breast than there was humanity in her brother’s. This was no battlefield. This was no war.

And one night as Michi ran a brush through her mistress’s hair, the other girl assigned to her bedchamber—a sweet and clever Ryu girl called Kiki—knocked over a bottle of perfume, glass smashing on the floorboards. Aisha had risen from her cushion, lightning in her eyes. She raised her hand, and Michi moved before she had a chance to think. Reaching out with that terrible speed that had served her so well in swordplay, catching the older woman’s wrist as it descended, knuckles white upon her arm.