by Jay Kristoff
Ryusaki knew now why this place was called “the Stain.”
The Kagé captain’s breather was choked and useless, the device like a stone about his face. The internal mechanism had failed yesterday, and only the filter scrims kept the deadly fumes at bay now. He felt dirtier than he could ever remember; like he’d taken a bath in fresh sewage and dried off by rolling in rotting corpses. Every breath was a black ache, eyes scummed with charcoal tears behind his goggles, throat parched, lips cracking. But he dared not remove the breather to drink, not even for a second. Not even for a mouthful.
He knew the Guild had built their factory here in the Stain for that very reason—an aerial approach would be intercepted by ironclads, the roads and rail lines were a bottleneck, always watched, and an approach overland through the deadlands was virtual suicide. The soldier in him had to admire the bastards.
“How you faring, boys?”
Ryusaki looked back at his fellow Kagé and saw Shintaro and Jun both looked like hell. Faces hidden beneath breathers and goggles, swathed head to foot, heavy gloves and boots, tied off at the hemlines. But their postures showed both were feeling the effects of the deadlands just as much as Ryusaki was. Jun in particular was doing it hard—he’d puked into his breather last night and had to take the mask off to clean it, sucking down a few lungfuls of fumes. His eyes were so bloodshot, Ryusaki could almost see them glowing behind his goggles.
A weary thumbs-up from Shintaro was all he got, so he turned and slogged on, earth crumbling beneath his weight as if the surface was a rotten, hollowed shell. Deep footprints marked their trail from the northern rail lines; the trio had stowed away on a freight train loaded with iron, hitching as close to the staging grounds as they dared before leaping off into the deadlands the night before last.
One day and two nights in the hells …
Daichi had asked for volunteers, and Ryusaki had known the risks when he stepped forward. But the message from the Kigen cell was clear: the Guild was building something in the Stain, and at this stage of the game, the Kagé couldn’t afford to be blind. If the Stormdancer had returned, the council could have used her eyes. As it was, they had to do it the hard way. The way they’d been doing it for years before the girl arrived on her thunder tiger.
Suited Ryusaki just fine.
The three Kagé trudged through the wasteland, following sky-ship exhaust trails. Chill winds howled across the desolate plains but utterly failed to stir the vapor: the fumes clung to the soil like a toddler to its mother’s kimono. The rents in the earth were worse than he’d ever seen; some stretching ten feet deep, and the trio was forced to climb down into the fissures if they proved too wide to leap across. The vapor hung heavy within these cracks; a tar-thick, sticky smog, deathly cold, choking daylight utterly. In the deepest of them, he swore he could hear a voice, lilting and sweet, whispering just beyond the edge of understanding.
A woman’s voice …
They marched on, one shuffling step at a time, until his feet bled and his legs trembled. At last Jun could walk no more, sinking to his knees. He retched again into his breather, black and vile, filling the eyeholes. And Ryusaki was forced to watch, helpless, as the young man tore his mask away and puked again; a gurgling fountain of gray and scarlet, slumping face-first into the corrupted earth.
His eyes had turned black.
Twenty-two years old.
They whispered a prayer to Enma-ō, begging the Great Judge to weigh the boy fair. They had no offerings, no wooden coin or incense to burn for him. Looking at the deadland ashes already caked on the boy’s face, Ryusaki hoped they would be enough to grant his soul a hearing at the Court of Hells. The entire countryside had been burned to produce them, after all. That should be offering enough for any judge.
Miles. Hours. Fumes so thick his vision swam, head buzzing, the taste of death chalked on his tongue. Shintaro stumbled behind him, fell under the weight of his pack, and Ryusaki dragged him upright and slapped his back, promising a decent cup of Danroan saké when they returned to civilization. The boy was nearly delirious, but he nodded and kept walking, shoulders slumped, like a man on his way to the executioner’s scaffold.
They crested a small hill near dusk. And across the sea of fumes, they saw it.
The Guild staging grounds.
Ironclads hanging in the air like bloated lotusflies. Walls of razor wire, halogen lamps and cutting torches burning as Lady Amaterasu slipped toward her rest. Ryusaki fumbled with the spyglass at his belt, thumbed the ash from the lenses, cursing beneath his breath as he held it to his eye. Squinting into the Guild compound, blinking black tears, he caught sight of hulking machines lined up in formation, close to a hundred in all. Four legged, brittle-yellow, chainsaw blades for hands. It took a few moments to realize they were shreddermen suits.
Why would the Guild need a legion of those?
He hissed through gritted teeth as realization dawned.
To cut a forest down …
He shook his head, started to turn away when he spotted it. Just a glimpse; a shadow within shadows, something vast and black lurking amidst the smog. But then Lady Sun hit the horizon, flaring bright as she laid down to sleep, and he saw it; a kettle-bellied, sawtoothed colossus with smokestack spines and the legs of some vast, iron spider. A machine the likes of which he had never seen.
“Raijin’s drums, what is that?” he breathed.
Shintaro slumped down in the ash, staring at his hand as if amazed he owned a set of fingers. Ryusaki coughed, tasting black on his tongue. Unbuckling Shintaro’s pack, he pulled aside its oilskin, revealing the graceless bulk of a wireless transmitter. He cranked the handle, but the machine made a sound like a meat grinder, refusing to register power.
“Shit.” Ryusaki thumped the radio as Shintaro keeled over beside him, gasping like a landed fish. “Come on, you bastard, work…”
If it heard him, the transmitter made no effort to obey.
He could feel a sickness in his belly that had nothing to do with fear. An ashen, blackened nausea, creeping into his bones, up toward his heart. He could feel it inside him. Death taken root. Fear beside it. But not here. Not yet.
Ryusaki lurched to his feet, cut loose his own gear and slung the transmitter’s weight across his back. Shintaro was spasming, black foam filling his breather, and Ryusaki knelt long enough to give him a blade to the heart. Better to die quick. Better not to suffer.
Not like he was going to.
The Kagé captain drew a ragged breath, adjusted the transmitter on his back and turned north, toward the rail lines. He had to get far enough from the smog that the device might work, send a message to the closest listening post, on again, until it reached the Iishi. Because Ryusaki knew now he never would.
Never see those mountains again, hear the windsong in the trees, watch flowers bloom in a blessed spring. Never see his brother again. Never again be scolded by his mother for not eating right or cursing too much. Never to see this war end.
He closed his eyes, willed away the grief, the fear, the despair. Not a second to waste on any of it. Because he refused to die for nothing. To allow Shintaro and Jun to have died for nothing. This news would reach the Iishi, even if it killed him.
Head bowed, fighting for every breath, Ryusaki began trekking north.
Even if it killed him.
30
A MOMENT OF EMPTY
Even though he’d broken the lock on her cell, Ayane had insisted she return to her prison after seeing to Daichi’s wounds. Quietly closing the door behind her and sitting in the dark to wait, despite all of Kin’s protests. She said she wanted permission before she would leave her cage again. Validation. Vindication. Finally given by an old man with bruised and ragged breath, awakening yestereve from a sleep that would have become death, if not for the accursed lotusgirl and her gleaming spider limbs.
Freedom at last.
Ayane stepped from the cell and threw her arms around his neck, her smile as wide as the sky. She smel
led of sweat, damp cotton, dried blood. Kin gave a weak hug in return, waiting for her to release him. Her arms slipped away from his shoulders reluctantly, and she stepped back to look him over with those dark, liquid eyes, skin as pale as moonlight.
“Kin-san, what’s wrong?”
“… Nothing.”
“First Bloom, you could not lie a little harder, could you?” A wry smile. “That way I could at least try to believe you.”
“Why do you still do that?”
“Do what?”
“Swear by the First Bloom. You’re not Guild anymore.”
“Old habit?” The girl shrugged, silver limbs rippling on her back.
“It makes you stand out. Reminds people who you used to be. Daichi agreed to release you because you saved his life. But the less they think of you as Guild, the better.”
“Then who should I swear by? Thunder Gods and their drums? Maybe the Maker and his testicles?” She adopted a gruff voice, slapped a mock frown onto her face. “Izanagi’s bawwwwls.”
Kin smiled despite himself. “You do that very well.”
“My thanks, my Lord.” The girl bowed from the knees, like a lady of court. “Now, will you tell me what troubles you, or should we pretend you are a halfway decent liar and have you show me the bathhouse instead?”
“Just … all of it,” he shrugged. “The ’thrower malfunction. Daichi nearly dying. They think it’s my fault. Everything has gone to hell since Yukiko and Buruu left.” A sigh. “And they should be back by now.”
The words sounded as though someone else were speaking them. Someone in a distant room, indulging in idle gossip, too foolish to even contemplate.
Yukiko missing? Nonsense. The last time he’d seen her, they’d had a screaming fight. Fate would never be so cruel as to take her away without giving him a chance to—
“You are worried about her,” Ayane said.
He stared at the floor. Nodded.
“I am certain she is all right, Kin. Wherever she is. She is the Stormdancer. She destroyed three ironclads without so much as a scratch. Killed a Shōgun simply by looking at him.”
Kin shook his head.
“That’s not her. The way you all see her…” He sighed, rubbed the crease between his brow. “You don’t know her at all.”
Ayane touched his hand, fingertips as gentle as cobwebs across his skin. A frail smile bloomed on her lips.
“You are very sweet, you know, Kin-san. You always think the best of everyone.”
He glanced down as her fingers touched his, raising unexpected goosebumps on his skin. Looking up into her eyes, he realized how close she stood. And before he knew what was happening, her lips were touching his, full and soft and warm, her body pressed against him, gently, as if he might break. He lingered for a second, and two, and three, breath caught in his lungs, white noise in his ears, until at last he broke away, stepping back and raising his hands. Ayane stood still as stone, eyes closed, silver limbs unfurling and rippling about her, bruised-pink lips curled in a delicate, tiny smile.
“So that is what it feels like,” she breathed.
“Why did you do that?”
Ayane opened her eyes, blinking rapidly. The silver limbs shivered.
“Just to feel,” she said. “Just to know.”
“You shouldn’t do something like that. Not without asking first.”
“You did not like it?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Didn’t you?
“I am sorry. I just thought…” She clasped her hands together. “I thought if you did not want me to, you would have stopped me…”
“Don’t do it again, please.”
“Do not be angry at me.”
“I’m not angry…”
“You are.” Tears welled in the girl’s eyes. “I am sorry. It is just … everything, all this…” She shook her head, groping blindly for the words. “Now I have the chance to feel something, I just want to feel it all…”
The tears spilled over her new eyelashes, down those moon-pale cheeks.
“I am so sorry, Kin-san.”
“It’s all right.” He opened his arms, offered an awkward hug. She pressed against him and shivered, chest heaving softly, and he ran his hand over the stubble on her head and whispered, “It’ll be all right, don’t cry, hush now,” feeling altogether wretched.
Not long ago, he was just like her, spreading his wings for the first time in a world he’d never known. He remembered what it was to feel that way; to be the unwanted one, the one outside looking in, and for one brief, impossible moment, he forgot about a girl with long dark hair and skin like smooth cream and eyes so deep he could drown, flying away on her thunder tiger and taking his heart with her. Forgot that she was missing, that she could be dead, that the last time he spoke to her could be the last time they ever spoke at all.
Forgot about her entirely.
But only for a moment.
A single, empty moment.
* * *
Angry stares prickled on the back of his neck.
Ayane walked beside him, seemingly lost in the flood of sights and smells, a small smile on her face as she squinted at the treetops and breathed deep, as if every lungful were her first and last. But Kin could feel it. See it in the Kagé’s grim expressions, shoulders set, pausing in their labors as the pair walked by and making the warding sign against evil when they thought he could not see.
Some looked upon Ayane with vague approval; it seemed rumor about her saving Daichi’s life had spread. But for him, there was only mistrust. Anger and contempt.
They stepped onto a footbridge, Ayane chattering about the way the wind made the hairs on her arms stand up in tiny rows, how it felt like static current, and how strange it was to have hair on her arms at all. Kin prickled under the angry stares, teeth gritted, rankling at the injustice of it all. If not for his ’throwers, that oni war band would have been unstoppable—the Kagé could never have met them in battle, let alone bested them. If not for his perimeter, even now those hellspawn would be roaming the forest with abandon, and the Kagé would be holed up in their trees and praying for Yukiko to return. Before they failed, the emplacements had taken out more than a dozen of the monsters. But did that matter to anyone? Did anyone take even a second to think what might have happened if Kin had not been here at all? And did no one else think it suspicious that every single ’thrower failed within seconds of each other?
How the hells did they get those seals to rupture?
“Guildsman.”
The voice was a fist in his gut, hard and freezing, the memory of the knife twisting his input jack setting his teeth on edge.
Skritch.
Skriiiitch.
“Go away, Isao,” Kin said.
The boys were standing at the end of the footbridge, cutting off their passage to the bathhouse; Isao in front, Atsushi lurking like a shadow behind. Kin stopped, pulled Ayane to a halt. The girl blinked and looked around, doe-eyed and confused.
“What is it, Kin-san?”
“Go back to the prison.” He kept his voice low. “Wait for me there.”
“I told you what would happen if you didn’t leave.” Isao hefted a pair of tonfa; wooden clubs with a short handle perpendicular to the shaft. “You should have listened.”
Kin noticed movement behind him; Takeshi standing at the other end of the bridge, smile stretched across that crooked face. He looked around to the villagers on the other platforms, but none would meet his gaze. They picked up their bundles, or simply abandoned their tasks and walked away. The boys were all oni killers—if they had issue with the Guildsmen, it seemed not many Kagé considered it their business after the disaster at the ’thrower line.
Kin squeezed Ayane’s hand, pulled her behind him.
“Stay out of the way, Ayane.”
“Your accursed shuriken-throwers nearly got Daichi-sama killed,” Isao spat. “I warned you.”
Ten feet away.
“My ’throwers?�
� Kin hissed through gritted teeth. “You’re the bastards who sabotaged them. That’s why you begged Daichi not to fight at the line. You set them to fail, but you wanted them to blow in the test run with the whole village watching, not in the middle of—”
“How the hells would I know how to sabotage your machines, Guildsman?”
“I saw your hands after the battle, Isao. They were covered in grease.”
“Grease, you fool?” Isao scoffed. “Was it black? Sticky? Like oni blood?”
Five feet.
“When Daichi hears about this—”
“And how is he going to hear about it?” Isao smiled. “Dead men don’t talk.”
Two feet. Close enough to see the sweat beaded upon the boy’s skin. The hatred unveiled in his eyes.
“Isao, don’t—”
The tonfa whistled past his jaw, Kin jerking away and cracking the back of his head into Ayane’s nose. The girl squealed and put her hands to her face, staggered back, grasping at the rope railing for balance. The bridge swayed beneath them.
Kin stepped forward and grabbed the second tonfa, wood smacking sharply against his palms. He tried to wrestle the weapon from Isao’s grip, but the boy lashed out with the other club, once, twice, cracking into his solar plexus and ribs, bringing the wind up from his lungs with a mouthful of vomit. Kin aimed a clumsy elbow as he fell, clipping Isao’s chin. A foot to his gut curled him up on the deck as he heard Ayane cry out, a sharp snatch of laughter from Takeshi as he seized the girl’s arms.
Isao hauled Kin to his feet, punched him in the stomach again, and again, and again, until the pain burned white and his breath turned red and the world lurched side to side as if a giant were shaking it in clumsy, fat fists. He felt himself being pushed against the railing, bridge rocking beneath them, Isao’s hand wrapped in his collar, the other clutching his obi and dragging him upward, dangling him out over the sixty-foot drop to the forest below.
