Stormdancer (29 page)

Kin held one of the severed feathers, running his fingers along the path of the sword blow. He could sense a faint discharge of electricity from it. The broken plume was reflected in his rectangular eye, heavy as stone in his gauntlets.

The arashitora glared, motionless, curled around the twisted metal stanchion he was chained to. The arena floor was littered with cut feathers, shifting in the noxious wind. The skies overhead rolled with dark, threatening clouds.

The black rain would begin falling soon, skies spitting toxin back onto the people who had poisoned them, turning all to pitted, hissing scar tissue. Kin found it strangely reassuring; nature’s ability to cleanse itself of the filth they pumped into it. He was sure that, if the planet were somehow rid of its bipedal infection, it would right itself eventually. He wondered how long it would take for the world to muster anger enough to shake them from its skin. Quake and flood, disease and storm. Open the fault lines, let it rain, flush all of it away.

Farewell and goodbye and goodnight, everyone. Remember to shut off the light when you’re done.
Buruu stood abruptly, claws clicking across the stone, staring into the dark with his head cocked to one side. Kin turned, and she was standing there in the black, pale and perfect and beautiful.
“Yukiko,” he breathed, his voice a choir of flies.
“I’m glad you came, Kin-san.” Quiet. Lips barely moving.
“I didn’t see you there.”
“Kitsune looks after his own,” she shrugged. “But do you see what they did to him?”
“A blind man could see that.”
She moved past him in the gloom, across the arena floor. Padding softly along the straw, hands clenched, hair hanging over her face. He could see she had been crying. She reached out with trembling fingers. The arashitora stood, pushed his head into her arms, enfolded her in his crippled wings. He purred; deep thunder rumbling beneath a cloak of warm, white fur. She hugged him fiercely, face crumpling like it were made of paper, sodden with tears.
Kin watched them mutely, wondering what passed between them. He couldn’t help but feel jealous of the beast, to know the inner workings of her mind and heart, to speak volumes without ever saying a word. What a strange thing for the Guild to want to exterminate. What a wonderful gift. To never be alone. To know the truth of another’s soul. Maybe that was why they were afraid. Truth in the Guild was a dangerous thing.
Yukiko sniffed, swallowed thickly. She turned to Kin, scraped the hair from her eyes, one arm still resting on Buruu’s neck.
Gods, she’s beautiful.
“I can’t stay long. They will be looking for me.” Her voice was so small and fragile it made his chest hurt. “Can it be done?”
His boots rang on the stone, skin spitting chi smoke into the warm, sticky air. Walking across the arena floor, he had an almost overpowering urge to tear off his helmet, to see her again with his own eyes.
“I think so.”
“And will you help us?”
“There is nothing in this world I would not do for you, Yukiko.”
She smiled at him then, so sad and flawed and perfect that he almost cried. She flung herself around his neck and he wanted nothing more than to hold her in his own arms, to smell her sweat, feel her hair on his face. If he could have given up every day of his life at that moment, for just one minute with his flesh pressed against hers, he would have done it with a smile on his face.
She drew away, and it was all he could do to let go, to hold back from squeezing her as tightly as he could, fusing them into a single, breathing—
“How long will it take?”
He blinked, shook his head. The mechabacus on his chest spat and chattered, a voice in his head, wheels and numbers and probabilities. He could see the apparatus in his mind’s eye, felt metal being shaped beneath his hands in the stuttering light of the cutting torch amidst the smell of smoking solder. A creation for the sake of something more than destruction. Not a war machine. Not an engine to drive a slave ship or chainkatana. A gift. A gift for the one he loved, for the one she loved.
He would not sleep until it was done.
“A week,” he finally replied. “They have me working on Yoritomo’s saddle. Perfect subterfuge. I can come and go here as I please. I told them I was taking measurements to night.”
She couldn’t see him smiling behind his mask. His heart ached.
“A week.” She smiled, tears in her eyes.
“Will you be able to get away? Won’t they be watching you?”
“I have friends in the palace. Even guards have to sleep sometime.” She shrugged. “And Kitsune looks after his own.”
“Well, let’s hope he looks after me too.”
“I know what you’re risking to do this. Thank you, Kin-san.”
“Thank me later. When we are far from here.”
“We?”
“We,” he nodded, dropping the severed feather to the stone. “I am coming with you.”

Hiro had been taken off her guard detail, and the two new Iron Samurai stationed outside Yukiko’s door had barely spoken a word to her. They would step aside to allow servants to bring in her meals, to change the linen, fill the bath. Her attempts at conversation were met with metallic silence. Michi was her only real company when the sun was up, and the two girls whiled away their time over decks of cards or listening to the sound box, speaking in tiny, hushed voices about the wheels that had been set in motion around the city.

Michi had brought her small folded maps of the palace, outlining the entrances that the servants used to move from wing to wing, or exit into the grounds. She had showed Yukiko how she could stand on her dresser and shove aside the panels in the roof, squeeze through the space between beam and shingle and circumvent the nightingale floors entirely. Told her about the bent maple tree in the southeastern corner of the garden, and how the serving girls used it to slip over the wall and tryst with their lovers in the city proper. How the palace of the Shōgun was not the impregnable fortress he believed, and that it was compromised by people he considered beneath his notice every single day.

The bicentennial of the Kazumitsu Dynasty was fast approaching, and the court was abuzz with excitement. A grand gala had been planned, and Yoritomo was set to make one of his rare appearances before his people. Since the arena was already occupied, the sky-docks had been chosen as the venue for the celebration. Free food and drink for every citizen of Kigen, followed by a magnificent parade of the Shōgun and his court down the Palace Way into Docktown. A few hours before the Hour of the Fox fell, and the third century of Kazumitsu rule over Shima began, the gala would culminate in a twilight fireworks display the likes of which the city had never seen.

Yoritomo’s dominion.”
“What about my father?” The bruise on Yukiko’s cheek was turning an ugly
yellow at the edges. “Kasumi and Akihito?”
“The sky-ship they escape on will be in dock tomorrow. Papers are already
drawn up for the return trip to Yama. The authorities will suspect nothing, nor
will they have time for scrutiny with all the traffic around the gala. The ship
flies Phoenix colors, but her captain is a friend of ours. We have friends ready
at the docks too.”
“Where do these ‘friends’ come from? Can you trust them?” Michi tilted her head at the questions.
“You are not the only one who has been wronged by the Shōgunate of
Shima, Yukiko-chan. Aisha and Daichi- sama have been gathering contacts for
years, waiting for the opportunity to strike. In a system as brutal as this, there
are always people who slip through the cracks. Countless lives ground between
the gears of the machine.” She shrugged. “This is how the rain becomes a flood.
One drop at a time.”
“There will be bushimen everywhere around the sky-docks during the celebrations. Iron Samurai too, if Yoritomo is making an appearance. Isn’t there a
safer way to smuggle them out? By train, maybe?”
“There will be so much noise and saké at the gala, three more shadows in
the mob will not be noticed. Besides, the bushimen and samurai will have
more pressing concerns, assuming you have done your part.”
“Have no fear of that.”
“Are you certain you are ready for this?”
Yukiko glared, iron in her eyes, not saying a word. Her fists were balled on
her knees, jaw clenched, her whole body as still and quiet as midnight. Michi
met her stare for a silent moment, a faint, grim smile curling the edges of her
mouth. She nodded.
“You are ready for this.”

On the third night, as she was preparing to slip into the crawlspace in the roof, Yukiko heard urgent, hushed conversation outside her bedroom door. Creeping closer, she could make out three male voices under the clank and hiss of ō-yoroi. The first two were her new guards, their tone stiff with challenge. When she recognized the third, her heart skipped a beat.

The door slid open and there he stood, wrapped in a kimono of dark red silk, embroidered with gold. Chainsaw daishō tucked into his obi, long hair drawn back into a simple tail, the light of flickering globes reflected in irises of beautiful sea-green.

He looked over his shoulder, covered his fist and bowed at his fellow Elite. And with the only hint of compassion they had shown in three days, the men turned away without a word and closed the door behind him.

She was across the room and in his embrace before he could speak, pressing hard against his chest, arms wrapped around him so tight she feared his ribs might break. And as his lips met hers, as he put his hands on her body, for a brief, intoxicating moment, any thought of crawlspaces and nightingale floors and maple trees fled from her mind, and all she was left with was the smell of his fresh sweat, the faint taste of saké on his lips, the ache his touch left between her thighs. The silk around her body fell away beneath his hands, and as her skin pressed against his, she closed her eyes and sighed his name and forgot the sound of her own.

Afterward in the sweat-stained dark, she laid her head against his chest and remembered. Guilt raised its head, subtle poison seeping into a cool mountain stream and turning it black as the rivers that flowed through Kigen’s heart. She thought of her father and Buruu in their prisons. Kin slaving over his workbench. Even Hiro lying here beside her, oblivious to the plan unfolding under his nose. And there, wrapped in the warmth of his arms, she felt completely and utterly alone.

“I can’t wait to get out of this place,” she whispered.
“Am I that awful?” Hiro raised an eyebrow.
“No.” She smiled and kissed his skin. “But everything else around me

feels . . . polluted. There are so many wheels and lies within lies here.” She shook her head. “I feel like it’s rubbing off on me. Turning me into something I’m not. This place is poisonous.”

“You will be here for some time. Try to make the best of it. When the Shōgun has calmed down, I will petition him for permission to court you. I have sent a letter to my father—”

“Court me? What the hells for?”
“So I can be with you.” He frowned, leaning up on one elbow. “Hiro, you’re here with me right now,” she laughed, kissing him again. “In public.” He searched her eyes. “I risked my life coming here without

permission, Yukiko. And if it were only me, I would gladly risk more to feel you in my arms. But my comrades who guard your door? The servants who turned a blind eye to my passing? We risk their lives also, meeting this way.” He took her hand, ran his thumb across her knuckles. “But more than that, I want people to know you are mine. This hiding, this skulking about like a thief, it dishonors us both.”

“That is not true. We must think of our families. Of our names. I am sworn toYoritomo-no-miya.”
“I know that, Hiro.”
“Then you know that, first and foremost, I am his servant. I live and die by the Code of Bushido. I must honor my oath.”
“An oath to a liar is no oath at all,” she muttered.
“What did you say?”
A sigh. She sat up and threw a thin kimono over her shoulders, slipped out of the bed. Padding barefoot across the polished boards, she stopped at the tiny window, staring out into the dark Kigen night. Summer’s edge was growing dull; autumn would soon be here, and from there the world would slip into the cold depths of winter. Would he understand when he stood by this window alone? Should she tell him she’d be long gone before the first snows began to fall?
She looked at him, folded her arms about herself.
“You’re a good man,” she said. “But there are things about your master you don’t know. Things that might make you rethink your obedience.”
“Without his oath, without his Lord, a samurai is nothing. Honesty. Respect. Loyalty. Honor. This is the code of the warrior. I am samurai before all, Yukiko. To wield the long and the short sword and to die. This is my purpose.”
“Someone once told me ‘To be a servant can be a noble thing, but only as noble as the master served.’ ”
“Your father?”
“A friend.” A quiet sigh. “I wish you could meet him.”
She stared out into the dark, heard the wind whispering through the stunted gardens below.
The tantō was in her hand, the thin river of blood spilling down Daichi’s chest. She could hear the knife as it clattered to the floorboards, hear Daichi asking her why.
She had been reborn that night. Become something more. Something better.
“Why are you speaking this way?” There was anger in Hiro’s voice, bewilderment in his eyes. “You talk as if you wish me to question my Lord. But without my oath, I am nothing. Bushido is my purpose, my heart. It is the Way. Yoritomo-no-miya is Lord of this Empire. All his people owe him fealty. Including you, Yukiko.”
She could see his eyes in the dark; the beautiful sea-green that had haunted the dreams of a girl lost in the Iishi. It all seemed so terribly long ago—the oni and the Kagé, the endless swaying ocean of rain-washed gloom. The girl who had crashed in those woods and dreamed of those eyes was a stranger now.
Yukiko sighed again and turned from the window, toxic, muted moonlight at her back. She shrugged the robe from her shoulders, slipped naked into the bed beside him and wrapped herself in his arms again. Closing her eyes, she pretended the next few days would be enough. Pretended she wasn’t lying to him with every breath she mustered.
“Loyal to a fault.” Aisha said.
She lay in the dark, eyes wide open, listening to his heartbeating.
I can’t tell him.

Hideo watched the grubby dawn light filter through the beach glass, shadows of the windowpane creeping across the floor to his master’s bed. The pipe in his hands was long- stemmed, bowl carved like a tiger’s head, smoke drifting from its open mouth. His morning fix was almost done; after two more puffs he would be dry, and soon the scratching, sour-tongued need would begin building again. The monkey on his back, chattering and digging its fingers into his spine. The demon who knew all his secrets.

What an old fool you are. Master of the Imperial Court. Eyes in every tavern, ears on every street corner. Not a man nor mouse who could hide from you in all of this land, and you cannot find a way to rid yourself of this wretched weed.

Poring over another document, he dipped his calligraphy brush into the cuttlefish ink. He made three short, precise strokes, giving permission for the Dockers Union to stop work and attend the bicentennial gala at weeksend. It could just as easily have been a purchase order for a hundred new slaves to toil and die on the Shōgun’s lands. An arrest order for a dissenter who would disappear one night and never speak again. A death warrant.

Inhale. Close your eyes. Feel the dragon slide down your throat, spreading heavy coils throughout your veins. Hold your breath. Listen. Hear the emptiness inside your head. Embrace it. Be nothing. Know nothing. That you are nothing. That the need to breathe inside your lungs, building, burning, like all things, is only an illusion. Exhale. Open your eyes and watch the smoke dance in the muted light.

He blinked at the calligraphy brush and fancied it a blade in his hands. A weapon that had killed more men than a bushiman or Iron Samurai could ever dream.

I am consort to Lady Izanami, Mother of Death. This ink is the blood of my victims.
Yoritomo yawned and sat up in bed, blinking around the bedchamber as if confused. He ran his hand across his irezumi, palm rasping on his skin, eyes finally falling on his minister kneeling in the sitting room outside.
“I commanded that the lady wait in her own chambers, great Lord, equal of heaven.” Hideo’s tongue felt too thick for his mouth. “She can return when we are done if that is your wish.”
Yoritomo sipped at the water by his bedside, grimacing at the chemical tang.
“No.” He shook his head. “Send her back to her father with some iron for her dowry. I have no more need of her. Ryu women leave an aftertaste if savored for too long.”
“As you say, great Lord. The lady will be returned to her family once the marks of your . . . affection fade.”
“Is there anything important this morning?” Yoritomo waved at the stack of documents on Hideo’s table. Smoke curled up from the tiger’s mouth, drifting across the pages. The minister put the pipe to his lips.
“Lord Hiro asks again to beg your forgiveness personally, Seii Taishōgun. He seems genuinely contrite, and seeks to make amends to his sovereign Lord and master.”
“Hiro,” Yoritomo growled. “I should have had him commit seppuku for his failure.”
“My sister and her husband have asked that I convey their eternal gratitude for sparing their only son your wrath, great Lord. Hiro is most dear to them.”
“He is too young to wear the ō-yoroi and the golden jin-haori. He is too young to stand among the Kazumitsu Elite. You spoil him, Hideo.”
“My sons are dead, great Lord.” An old man’s sad smile, his eyes red with lotus smoke. “Fallen before their time in the glorious war, green saplings cut down beneath the Empire’s flag. You will forgive an uncle his indulgences to his only nephew, and make time to hear Hiro’s lament?”
Yoritomo sighed, nodded, “Very well.”
“Your generosity is boundless, Seii Taishōgun. My heartfelt thanks.”
“What else?” Yoritomo waved at the table.
“Preparations for the gala are well underway. The marching order that the courtiers will use during the parade has at last been finalized.” Hideo waved his pipe as he spoke. “Tora first, naturally. The Ryu retinue will march in front of the Fushicho, followed by the Kitsune. The ruffled feathers of the Phoenix emissaries have been smoothed over after some initial difficulties.”
“What did you promise them?”
“That a Phoenix commander would receive your careful consideration when you replace General Tora Hojatsu as head of the gaijin invasion force.”
Yoritomo snorted. “If they wish to lead the entire army, perhaps the Fushicho should bring me victories in the skirmishes I have already allotted them.”
“I promised your consideration on the matter, great Lord. Nothing more.” A tired smile. “With that quibble silenced, all is now on schedule for the celebrations at weeksend. The fireworks have arrived from Yama, Fushicho Kirugume has composed a special piece to be played in your honor. I hear tell that the orchestra accompanying him will be at least fifty strong. The court is quite abuzz with excitement.”
“Very well.” The Shōgun stalked to the coral basin, splashing tepid water in his face. “Are we done?”
“There is one other matter, great Lord.” Hideo’s brow was creased with a small frown. “There has been much activity around the arashitora these last few days. Artificers coming and going at odd hours, taking measurements, poking and prodding. It seems a great deal of trouble for a simple saddle.”
Yoritomo smiled.
“Do not concern yourself, Hideo. My sister is arranging a gift for me.”
“Lady Aisha is—”
“Indeed. And she wishes to keep it a surprise. So be not alarmed.”
Hideo’s eyes narrowed slightly and he finally drew the last puff from his pipe. The smoke was cloying and warm, flowing down his throat, lungs open wide. Larynx to bronchi, alveoli to bloodstream and from there to bliss. The dragon uncoiled inside him, giving voice to his suspicion, serpentine form to his paranoia. Glittering scales. A cold, quiet hiss inside.
“A surprise, great Lord?” The old man smiled, smoke drifting from between his lips. “Well, you know how much we all enjoy those.”