by Jay Kristoff
Pulling the key free of the candle wax, she squinted at the impression it left behind: good and deep, sharp lines, more than enough to craft a forgery. More than enough to free her from this serpent’s nest.
She slunk back across the boards, eyes on Ichizo, not making a sound. Kneeling by the door she slipped the saucer beneath; a soft scrape of porcelain upon polished pine. No One’s note swiftly traveled back across the threshold.
“Key to your room? Why not come with me now?”
“Will not leave this palace without Aisha. Can work with this?”
A tremulous pause.
“Can have Akihito carve replica.”
Michi nodded, glanced over her shoulder at the man in her bed.
“Be swift, No One. Sleeping with a snake. Will bite me soon.”
She heard No One rise, quiet as she may, the faint click of her sandals and the scrape of the chamber pot upon the pine. And then she was moving, just another servant on night duty, floorboards singing beneath her. Ichizo frowned and murmured in his sleep, and Michi stood, lotusfly-quick, slipping the kohl stick into her pocket and the keys back into his belt.
She shrugged the kimono from her shoulders. It crumpled about her ankles as she slipped back to bed, crawled naked beneath the sheets. And as the motion across the mattress finally roused him, eyelids fluttering open, she pressed her mouth and body to his, hands descending, whispering his name.
He was awake then, if he hadn’t been before. And though his mouth tasted of saké and sugar, she imagined she could taste the venom beneath, the poison of the chi-mongers seeping through his veins and onto his tongue.
But not if I bite you first …
* * *
Daiyakawa was the village where she’d been forged, but the Iishi was the place she was honed.
She’d wanted to be a warrior, to fight in the field with the other Kagé on the day they rose against the Shōgunate. And so she trained hard—perhaps not as strong as the boys, but faster again by half, her blade swift as dappled sunlight through the trees. She practiced with Sensei Ryusaki until her fingers bled, until the blade was no longer in her hand, but part of her arm, and more, until there was no blade and no arm at all.
But to fight with steel in hand beneath a burning sky was not to be her fate.
She was perfect, Kaori had insisted. Young enough to unlearn her provincial ways, pretty enough to enjoy the attentions of the duller sex, but not so beautiful she would stand out in a crowd. And so they began training her for a different battleground, just as deadly as those stalked by Iron Samurai and bushimen. A battleground of polished pine and fluttering fans and rippling curtains of blood-red silk.
Kaori had been raised in the Shōgun’s court, privy to the upbringing of a “lady of station.” And so, she became Michi’s new sensei. Hour after hour, day after day. Music lessons. Poetry. Philosophy. Dancing. The crushing, mindless tedium of tea ceremonies, intricacies of courtly fashion, poise, diction, face. And then came her weapons training. Innuendo. Rumor mongering. Eavesdropping. Lip-reading. Flirtation. Sex. And if the thought of it all terrified her in the long, empty watches of the night, she needed only think of her cousins lying beheaded in the street, the emptiness in her uncle’s eyes as he plunged the blade into his own belly and dragged it right to left, and the fear became less than nothing; the weakness of a girl-child who had perished beside her cousins in the village square.
“Remember,” she would breathe. “Remember Daiyakawa.”
They smuggled her to Yama, and from there to Kigen. Paid an iron fortune to have her irezumi re-inked by a master artisan, decorating her flesh with the artistry a woman of her “breeding” deserved. She played the role of a sole-surviving daughter to a noble Tora family, murdered in a fire lit by Kagé insurgents, come to beg the First Daughter for mercy now that the Shadows had taken everything she was. And the Lady Aisha had looked at her with narrowed, puff-adder eyes as Michi told her story, false tears spilling down her cheeks, lower lip trembling just so; an audition for a role in the most dangerous treason afoot in all of Shima.
And then the Lady had smiled.
“You are perfect,” she said.
21
WEBS AND SPIDERS
Rebel. Traitor. Servant. Sister. Clanless. Kagé. Nothing. No One.
The line between who Hana was and wanted to be was growing more indistinct by the day. At the turning of dawn and dusk, she would peel away her mask like a snake shedding skin, one identity left crumpled in the corner as she shrugged on the new one, hoping it still fit.
And she had never felt more alive.
Evening hours were spent shuffling through the Daimyo’s palace. Watching the wedding preparations unfold, guest rooms being prepared for the clanlords of the Dragon and Phoenix, the huge retinues each would bring in tow. Listening for the tick-tick-tick of the spider-drones, watching for the palace bushimen, other servants, the house mistress and her powdered scowl. Cautious steps. Downcast gaze. Head bowed. Playing the role of the lowly Shit Girl nobody saw or heard or cared about. Counting down to the day they would have no choice.
By day, she would keep company with Akihito in her room—the big man watching the street from his perch by the windowsill, the girl sitting on her bed as they talked of revolution, of bright futures and distant dreams. He was at least ten years older than she, a decade deeper in the world. But when he laughed, she would feel it in her chest. When he told tales about hunting the arashitora, she found herself squirming on her mattress. She would watch him carve his blocks of clay or pine into works of beauty, the Lady Sun lighting his profile as if the Goddess herself adored him. And Hana would think of the boys she’d known—the clumsy fumbling and promises unkept—and wonder what other tricks Akihito’s hands might know.
He slept in the corner, a thin blanket for a pillow, as far from her as he could be. And when she woke in the evening as the sun was failing, he would be gone.
She’d asked Daken to follow him two days ago, more out of curiosity than concern. It turned out Akihito spent his days at the Market Square in the shadow of the Burning Stones. Pillars of blackened rock, the lingering scent of burnt hair, ashes swept into corners by a wailing wind, as if Fūjin himself were ashamed of the sight. The altar where Guild Purifiers burned children in their campaign against “Impurity.” The place where the Black Fox had been shot, where Hana had seen the Stormdancer kill Shōgun Yoritomo right before her wondering eye.
The square was filled with spirit tablets now, carved from wood, stone, clay. Wreaths of paper flowers rippling in the dirty breeze. Hundreds of names scribed by hundreds of hands. Tributes for the slaughtered gaijin, the Black Fox, sons and fathers killed in the war overseas. Akihito would work on his carvings, occasionally place a new tablet among the others. Daken was unable to read the names he scribed. Hana had a notion she knew who they were for anyway.
When she’d arrived home from her shift this morning, she found a package laid out for her on her mattress—thin black crepe tied with a bow of real silk. Unwrapping it with trembling fingers, she’d found new clothes of soft, dark fabric, a pair of good, split-toed boots. A comb of Kitsune jade and kohl to wipe around the edge of her eye. A bottle of black dye. A handful of coins. Beneath it all, a small note written in a messy hand she’d recognize anywhere.
“Love you, sister-mine.”
She’d stolen into Yoshi’s room, but found the bed empty, sheets still warm. She was still smiling as she slipped from her tenement tower a few minutes later, a poisoned autumn wind on her skin, into the bleak and empty dark before the dawn. Daken prowled beside her, his thoughts a soft purr within her own. The streets were near abandoned, smudged with dark fingerprints of exhaust, a few blacklung beggars rocking back and forth before their alms bowls in the muddy gloom. She stepped into the bathhouse on the corner, handed a copper kouka to the old woman yawning behind the counter and sat down to wait.
… bath again . .?
Again? My last one was two weeks ago, Daken.
… so . .?
So I stink like an oni’s asshole.
… whole city stinks … get clean good way to get noticed …
Let’s hope so.
The old woman nodded that all was ready, and Hana stepped into the bathroom, Daken keeping watch from a rooftop outside. A broad wooden tub was filled with cloudy water, the air hung thick with steam. Hana stripped off her grubby clothes, stared at herself in the fog-blurred looking glass. Insect-thin, long-limbed, ribs showing clearly beneath her skin. A too-flat chest, a narrow neck, hung with a tiny amulet on a leather thong. It gleamed in the candlelight; a golden oval set with a rearing stag, three tiny horns shaped like crescent moons. No matter how hungry, no matter how desperate things got, Yoshi had never let her sell it. It had been a gift from their mother, those brilliant blue eyes shining with love as she’d tied it around Hana’s neck on her tenth birthday.
“Wear it with pride,” she had said.
All they had left of her.
Sitting on the edge of the tub, rinsing black dye through her hair and watching the stains pool on the tile about her feet, she looked at the pile of new clothes Yoshi had brought her. The cut was good, the thread was fine. The boots alone would have cost two irons. Her thoughts turned to dark places, and she wondered again where her brother’s coin had come from. Who was missing it out there in the dark.
She’d asked Daken of course, but the cat had simply set sandpaper tongue to his not-so-privates, pretending like she’d never spoken. Though it had been Hana who raised the tom, though he slept beside her every day, it was Yoshi who’d fished the crying, bedraggled mop of fur from the storm drain all those years ago. The kitten had been near-dead, chewed by vermin, ears missing, tail gnawed; a lucky escapee from one of the last restaurants with coin to run the breathing pens required to keep kittens alive in Kigen’s roiling stink. And ever since that moment, there was something between Daken and Yoshi—something beneath the violent jibes and the excrement surprises planted beneath the bedclothes. An affection she supposed brothers would share, hidden behind coarseness and cruel jokes and indifference.
A debt as heavy as a sopping handful of mewling fur.
And so, Hana let it drop, let the cat and her brother keep their secrets. She knew one night she might learn the hard way where the money came from, but for the next few days at least, she had bigger issues to think about …
And walking through the predawn streets of the refinery district half an hour later, there he was. Leaning in an empty doorway. Framed by the crumbling shell and boarded windows of an abandoned tannery like some street-side master’s portrait.
“Well, well,” Akihito smiled. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“Bath day,” she shrugged. “New clothes.”
“You look nice,” he said, eyes on the street over her shoulder.
Hana smiled, trying to still the thrill of delight inside her. “I finally spoke to Michi. She has a plan to get herself out of her cell.”
Akihito nodded. “You can tell me about it when we get back to your flat.”
Daken prowled up to the big man, brushed against his leg, purring. Akihito stooped with a smile, scruffed the tom behind his mangled ears.
“You know he usually hates people,” Hana said. “Last stranger who tried to pet him got opened up from elbow to wrist. But he’s taken to you like a fiend to the pipe.”
“Well, we hunters have to stick together.”
Hana watched Daken push back against Akihito’s fingers, purring soft, eyes closed.
Gods, you’re a slattern, boy.
… nice hands …
Don’t tease.
… my job …
“All right then.” She nodded to Akihito. “Shall we be off?”
“Hai.” He straightened, pulling his hat down over his brow. “The drop box is secluded, but there might still be bushi’ about, so keep your eyes open—” Akihito’s gaze snagged on her leather patch, his cheeks flushing.
She smirked to see him stumble, running one hand over his braids, abashed and mumbling and sweet as sugar-rock.
“Gods, I’m sorry,” he said. “You know what I mean…”
“I know what you mean, Akihito-san. And it’s fine, really.”
A small smile, hidden by her new kerchief.
I have hundreds, after all.
* * *
They stole through the gloomy, tangled warren of Downside, Akihito limping in front, Hana close behind. The days were growing colder, night falling heavier. Each afternoon as the Sun Goddess sank to her rest, Kigen’s citizens slunk homeward, curfew nipping at their heels like hungry wolves. The distant tread of bushimen ringing across cracked cobbles, the city’s once-crowded streets as empty as her throne. And behind closed doors, Kigen’s people looked toward the palace crouched upon the hillside, and whispered. Or plotted. Or prayed.
The pair kept to the deepest shadows, the girl taking the lead, quiet as whispers. The smell of Kigen Bay crawled up from the city’s nethers, the hiss and stutter-clank of the refinery, strangling the glow of distant stars. Chi lanterns lined the streets; tiny pinpricks of light burning in braziers shaped like lotus blooms. A Guild crier trundled past on rubber treads; looking like a short, faceless fat man of riveted metal, spine dotted with exhaust pipes, bells clutched in each stunted hand.
The smoke in the mechanoid’s wake made Akihito’s throat burn as they passed by. The scent reminded him of Masaru’s pipe, stained fingers, his friend’s eyes alight with laughter.
You should never have left them.
He looked down at his leg, the dull pain of his wound flaring every time his right heel struck the ground. He could still see them in his mind’s eye; Masaru crouched in the jail cell, hands and lips smeared with red. Kasumi lying against the wall, pool of blood swelling all around her, bubbling on her lips as she spoke her last words to him.
“Fight another day, you big lump.”
The last time he’d ever seen either of them alive.
At least Yukiko had taken Masaru’s body with her when she flew north. At least he would’ve received a decent burial. But would the Shōgun’s dogs have burned offerings for Kasumi to Enma-ō? Would they have painted her face with ashes, as the Book of Ten Thousand Days commanded? Or did they just throw her body into some dank alleyway to be gnawed by corpse-rats? Would the Judge of the Nine Hells have weighed her fair, with no rites held in her name? Would the spirit stones Akihito left in Market Square be enough to see her soul through?
Curse you for a coward. You should’ve died with them. And if she was cast into Yomi to languish as a hungry ghost, at least you would’ve been with her. At least she wouldn’t be alone.
Hana grabbed his hand, tearing him from gloomy thoughts and back into the deeper gloom of Kigen’s streets. She dragged him into a narrow alley between a grubby textile store and a small temple. Slipping in beside him, she pressed against his arm, breathing low and measured.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Hssst!” A finger on his lips.
Akihito frowned, remained mute. The girl was staring directly at the wall, eye curling up inside its socket, lashes flickering. He heard the sound of heavy boots, peered out into the street, saw two bushimen emerging from an alley half a block away; black iron and blood-red tabards. They were pushing a young woman before them.
Their voices were low, just snatches beneath the refinery’s groan and clank, Akihito’s heart pounding in his chest. The first bushiman shoved the girl again; a small, pretty thing, clutching a torn servant’s kimono at her throat. Tear-streaked face, kohl running down her cheeks, hair tangled across bloodshot eyes.
“Be off.” One bushiman was retying his obi, war club under his arm. “You’ll find no more sport here, girl. Your master should know better than to send you into Downside before dawn.”
The girl ran weeping, back in the direction of the Upside mansions on the hill. The second soldier yelled after her.
“We catch you
out again after curfew, we’ll send you home with more than a limp!”
Akihito glanced at Hana as the servant passed by, torn clothes, sobbing and wretched. The girl met his stare, shrugging as if it meant nothing—a mask of indifference learned from a life at the bottom of the pile. But he could see the clenched jaw. Trembling fists.
The two bushi’ meandered past the narrow alley mouth, chuckling between themselves, passing by without so much as a glance. When their footfalls and rough talk had faded to a whisper, Hana nodded to Akihito, and the pair hurried on through the dark.
“How did you know they were there?” The big man spared a passing glance down the alleyway the serving girl would never forget. Two fat corpse-rats peered at him across shin-high piles of trash. One snuffled the air, baring crooked yellow daggers in black gums.
“I heard them.” Hana didn’t look back, kept her voice low.
“Funny that I didn’t.”
“Try losing an eye. See how much your hearing improves.”
They flitted on through the haze, stopping several times at Hana’s signal, slipping into shadows or squeezeways to avoid bushimen patrols or sky-ships rumbling overhead. The soldiers cut across the streets in random patterns, but Hana never failed to hear them, to hiss a quiet warning and drag him from the light. She moved like a fish through water, falling still as stone when the bushi’ drew close, melting away like smoke. It was uncanny. Unnerving.
As they neared the drop box, she pushed him into an alcove beside a baker’s shopfront, cracked awnings and cloudy beach glass. Pressing in beside him, she stared off into space. Again, her eyelid fluttered as if in a breeze, iris rolling up in her head. Daken leaped over the space between the rooftops above, his grace belying his bulk.
Akihito thought of Masaru then, stalking the last of Shima’s monsters together in long-gone days, Sensei Rikkimaru and Kasumi by their sides. The big man could see his friend clearly, as if the great hunts were only yesterday: yew bow held in stone-steady hands, string taut, arrow nocked, the Black Fox’s eyes rolling up in his head as he fired.
