by Jay Kristoff
She could smell it on the wind above the river’s stench; the faint perfume of smoking timber and spice, the sharp tang of chi burning in the Docktown warehouses, spitting from the power units of the Iron Samurai marching to defend them.
The music of chaos.
Smiling, she turned and crawled into the black.
47
CRESCENDO
In years to come, Hana would remember the night the Kagé attacked Kigen city as one of the darkest in her life. Not the worst. Not by far. But dark enough to leave a scar that would never truly heal.
There she stood, just at the beginning of it, unaware of what lay coiled and waiting in the hours ahead. She could hear the crowds outside their apartment walls, the clash of steel, the war-drum rhythm of running feet. Yoshi was crouched in a corner, iron-thrower in hand. She hovered by the window, peering into the charcoal haze, the flickering glow of growing flames reflected on the goggles strapped across her brow.
Sick with fear. Hands shaking. Somehow, some tiny part of her sensing the tremors of the incoming hurt. And as the dread rose up inside her, a slick, ice-cold bellyful, so too did the memory. Just like always.
The pain of it. The taste of it. In a life full of awful, crushing days, the yardstick by which all days would be measured.
The Worst Day of Her Life.
* * *
It began like every other. Rising with the sun, washing in brackish water and slipping into threadbare, third-hand clothes. Hana shuffled to the kitchen, cold rice leftovers serving as breakfast. Yoshi sat opposite, told her a dirty joke he’d heard in town that made her spit a mouthful all over the table. He couldn’t laugh with her, much as he wanted to; the inch-long split in his lip was still healing. The bruise under his eye was a toxic, sickly yellow, knuckles torn with the pattern of Father’s teeth.
Funny thing was, Da had never laid a finger on her.
She could never figure out why. He beat their mother until she couldn’t walk. Beat Yoshi like he was a pillow. But not once in her entire life had he ever raised his hand to her.
Not his little flower. Not his Hana.
It was autumn, and their pitiful lotus crop had already been stripped of blooms for the chi refineries. The ground was in terrible shape; blackening and beginning to crack in the worst of it. They stayed well away from the charred soil as they worked—Hana had tripped and fallen onto the dead ground the previous summer, spent an entire week vomiting and delirious, weeping black tears. The temperature was scalding, and the siblings were exhausted and filthy by sunset, creeping back to the house like kicked dogs slinking to their master’s feet.
The table was set with cracked plates and a posy of dried grass. Their father knelt at the head, already halfway into his bottle, cheeks and nose aglow with broken capillaries. The stump where his right hand used to be was unwrapped, shiny and pink. Medals hung on the wall behind him, remnants of an old life, gleaming like seashells on a deserted beach. Trophies for the hero; the lowborn Burakumin translator who saved the lives of seventeen Kitsune bushimen. A platoon of blooded clansmen saved by the heroism of a clanless dog.
Their mother stood in the tiny kitchen, boiling rice with some seasoning she’d scrounged from gods knew where. Pale skin, vacant blue-eyed stare, black ink under her fingernails from when she’d last dyed her hair.
Just another trophy for the hero.
Hana washed up, knelt to await the meal in silence. The fear was there, always, hovering in the back of her mind. She listened to her father pour another shot, shadows in the room growing longer, the darkness at the head of the table slowly deepening. A weight sat on her shoulders, the question always hanging in the air waiting to be answered.
What will set him off tonight?
Yoshi knelt opposite her, shappo on his head, tied beneath his chin. He’d won the hat from a city boy in a game of oicho-kabu three days ago and he was terribly proud of it, strutting in front of her like an emerald crane in a courting dance, laughing as hard as split lips would let him.
“Take that thing off,” their father growled.
Here it comes.
“Why?” Yoshi asked.
“Because you look like a damned fool. That’s a man’s hat. It’s too big for you.”
“Aren’t you always telling me to be a man?”
No. Don’t push it, Yoshi.
“I think he looks very handsome.”
Mother smiled as she placed a pot of steaming rice on the table. Tired blue eyes, full of love, crinkled at the edges as she stared at her son. Her Little Man.
Father glanced at her, and Hana saw the look on his face. Her heart sank into her belly, tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth.
“What the hells would you know?”
Clenched teeth. A spray of spittle.
Oh, gods …
Mother turned paler still, bottom lip quivering. She took a half step back, terrified and mute. To say anything at that point would be making it worse—to beg or apologize, even to whimper. As helpless as a field mouse in the shadow of black wings.
Da snatched up the saké bottle in his good hand, knuckles white as he rose to his feet.
“You worthless gaijin whore, I said what would you know?”
And just like that, just for that, he swung.
Hana saw the bottle connect with her mother’s jaw, time slowing to a crawl, watching the spray of red and teeth. She felt something warm and sticky splash onto her cheek, saw her father’s face twisted beyond reason or recognition. Screaming he should have left her there, in her accursed homeland with her bastard people, and he flourished the stump where his sword hand had been and roared.
“Look what they took from me!” Face purpling, skin taut and blood-flushed. “Look at it! And all I have to show for it is you!”
He loomed over their mother, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, Hana saw rage burning in those brilliant blue eyes.
“You pig.” Mother’s words were slurred around her broken jaw. “You drunken slaver pig. Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea what I was?”
Spit on his lips as he raised the bottle again. “I know what you’re going to be…”
Yoshi opened his mouth to yell, rising from his knees, hands outstretched.
The bottle fell, a long, scything arc ending in her throat and a spray of blood, thick and hot and bright. And Hana did what any thirteen-year-old girl would have done at that moment.
She started screaming.
* * *
Explosions tore across the night, dragging Hana from her reverie, back into the world beyond the window glass. She saw the harbor was ablaze, firelight spray-painted across southern skies. Great walls of black cloud rumbled and crashed above the city, the smell of burning chi entwined with the growing promise of rain.
“Izanagi’s balls,” Yoshi shook his head. “Someone’s riled about not getting invited to the Shōgun’s wedding…”
Hana tried to shake off the dread, closed her eye, frowned. “I can’t see much. Can’t feel many rats around.”
“Fire is making the little ones nervous. Big ones are opening shop on a fresh corpse two blocks north. Dinnertime.”
Hana left her vantage point near the window, knelt by the table, rocking a little, back and forth. She stared at Yoshi’s straw hat, at the jagged, broken-bottle cut running through the brim. Refusing to remember.
“Where the hells is this boy?” Yoshi hissed.
“Maybe we could go look for him?”
“You fixing to go outside in all this?”
“Jurou’s been gone all day, Yoshi. Aren’t you worried?”
“Safe to say.”
Yoshi chewed a fingernail, falling mute. Hana looked toward the window again.
“Gods, it sounds like the whole city’s coming apart…”
She reached out again with the Kenning, felt dozens of tiny sparks converging to the north. She could feel their hunger, taste their stink at the corners of her mouth. She reached toward D
aken, prowling western rooftops, just on the edge of word-range.
There’s a group of rats north of the hotel.
… so . .?
So be careful on the way back.
… i am a cat …
There’s a lot of them.
… meow . .?
All right, fine. If you get eaten, don’t bitch to me. What can you see?
… people running fighting men in white iron with growling swords …
Can I use your eyes?
… of course …
Lashes brushed her cheeks as she slipped behind Daken’s pupils. He was looking down into a cramped alley three floors below his perch, and she clutched the table, fighting off a sudden rush of vertigo. The docks around Kigen Bay were ablaze, black smoke and seething flames. The clouds were full of Phoenix sky-ships, darting and weaving like swallows, occasionally opening up with barrages of shuriken-thrower fire into alleys and houses.
chug!chug!chug!chug!
They could smell stagnant water, urine and trash below, ripe with flies’ eggs. Chi exhaust, ash and dust, the reek of pollution that had seeped into the city’s skin. And high above it all, drifting arm in arm with the smoke came the stink of charred fat. The reek of burning hair.
Hana could hear the crowd through his ears, roaring flames, ringing bells.
Be careful out there, little brother.
… still have one or two lives left …
She broke the contact with half a smile, mind drifting over the city. Feeling around one last time for corpse-rats, trying to catch a glimpse of the Kagé who must be behind these attacks. She found most of the Upside vermin gathered in that swarming knot two blocks north. They were a multitude, too grizzled to fear the flames, knuckle-deep in fresh meat and fighting amongst the guts. But a short spit from the edges of the feast, Hana felt a faint spark of distress.
The girl frowned. Pressed her lips into a bloodless line. Focusing tighter, she centered on the pain’s source. Felt the tear of broken glass in his insides, rolling onto his back, tail tucked between his legs as he screeched. Tasted his blood on his tongue, lolling from their mouths, clawing at their own belly to make the agony go away.
She pulled back, felt more of them—other fading sparks crawling into storm drains and writhing in the gutters. Rolling over and clawing at the sky, twisting into little balls of mangy fur and slowly turning cold.
Something was wrong.
She could almost taste it now; a faint undercurrent of pain, little flares struggling away from their fellows and curling up on themselves, snuffed out like candles in a monsoon wind.
Bad meat.
“Yoshi…” She looked up from the floor and into his eyes.
“What?” He surfaced from his reverie, rose from his crouch. “Did Daken see Jurou?”
“Yoshi, I think someone’s poisoning our rats…”
The door slammed inward with a sharp crack, just as the window shattered. Four figures rushed in from the hallway, another tumbling through the broken pane, landing in a crouch amidst a shower of falling glass. Hana rolled aside as the lead door-crasher swung a tetsubo at her head, smashing onto the cushion where she’d knelt a moment before. The second man through the door raised a plain but functional-looking sword and took aim for Hana’s throat.
Yoshi leveled his iron-thrower at the figure crouched amongst the broken glass. The man stood with a scowl. Hana caught a glimpse of small, piggy eyes, swollen, cauliflower ears.
“Gambler,” Yoshi hissed.
The pig-man lashed out with his war club, caught the iron-thrower across its nose and sent it spinning into the wall. A bright flash of light, a hollow boom as the shot in the chamber discharged, crossing the room to introduce itself to the door crasher’s right eye. The man spun on the spot and collapsed onto the thug behind him, painting the man’s face with a gout of warm, fresh red. Yoshi landed a kick on the pig-man’s thigh, tendons popping as the kneecap gave way.
Hana snatched up the fallen man’s club as she scrambled onto her feet, taking in the assailants with a desperate glance. Just another alley fight, just another scrap over a crust of bread or a place to sleep, the kind of brawl she’d lived with since she could walk. She shrank back, a short feint, then dropped to her knees and drove her war club’s haft into one assailant’s groin. The man squealed like a stuck corpse-rat, and Hana’s double-handed haymaker broke his jaw, teeth spilling across the piles of iron coins.
The pig-man lunged forward as his knee gave way, slamming his war club into Yoshi’s ribs. Studded iron cracking bone, breath spraying from the boy’s lungs. The pair fell into a tangle, flailing like children, all bloody knuckles and elbows. Yoshi gasped for breath, eyes full of tears. The pig-man locked his wrist and flipped him onto his belly, leaning into his shoulders with all his weight. The boy cried out, free hand scrabbling for the smoking iron-thrower laying just too far out of reach.
The blood-soaked gangster and his unstained comrade kicked aside their friend’s corpse and brought their weapons to bear on Hana—another iron-shod tetsubo and a pair of punching daggers. She smashed one knife aside with her club before a blow sent her flying through the rice-paper wall. Her weapon spun from her grasp as she crashed to the floor, coming to rest in a tangle of bedclothes. She heard cruel laughter as a knee was planted between her shoulder blades, felt heavy weight on her back, a stunning blow to the blind side of her face, her good eye pressed into the pillow.
“Is this your bedroom, little girl?” Someone grabbed her arm, twisted it behind her back. “Nice sheets.”
“The bitch broke my wrist!” The call came from the main room, hoarse with pain.
“Then come break hers.”
“Don’t you touch her!” Yoshi roared, struggling against the pig-man’s wristlock, spit flying between clenched teeth. “Stay away from her or I’ll kill you!”
The pig-man leaned close. Saké and sweat, damp breath on Yoshi’s ear.
“Told you I’d see you soon, friend.”
Hana cried out as her arm was twisted up higher behind her back. The blood-soaked man was fumbling with her hakama, trying to tear them off. She heard footsteps, heavy breathing of the second man entering the bedroom.
“Help me get her clothes off,” the bloody man hissed.
“The Gentleman wants them alive.”
“She’ll be alive.” A sharp smile; all teeth, no eyes. “She’ll just have trouble sitting for a while.”
“Who the hells are you people?” Hana cried.
She received another punch to the face in reply, stars bursting and spinning in her vision.
“Hold her down!”
“You want me to hold her down with a broken wrist?”
“Hurry up in there!” the pig-man roared.
“Get away from her!” Yoshi gasped, stretched toward the iron-thrower. “You bastards, I’ll kill you all!”
“Going to make you listen, friend,” the pig-man purred. “Make you watch everything we do to her. Cut off your eyelids so you can’t look away. It’s going to make what we did to your sweetheart look like a holy day…”
Hana’s screams were muffled in her pillow.
“No!” Yoshi roared.
“Listen, boy,” the pig-man hissed. “Listen to her sing—”
A shape dropped in through the broken window, a blur of smoke-gray and scars and piss-yellow glittering like broken glass. It landed on the pig-man’s shoulder, dug in with claws like katana. The man howled and reared back, flailing at the dervish of razors and dirty teeth. A paw brushed the surface of his eye, quicker than poison, so fast he didn’t even feel the blow until something warm and gelatinous spilled down his cheek. He screamed then; a trembling, furious wail, clutching the bloody socket as he rolled away, tore the shape off his shoulder in a shower of blood and hurled it across the room.
It thudded into the wall, tumbled down and landed perfectly on its feet.
“Mreowwwwwl,” it said.
Pig-man lurched to his feet, blood
spilling between his fingers, snarling with pain.
“My fucking eye—”
The shot popped his skull like a balloon full of red water, rocked what was left of his head back on his shoulders as it rang deafening in the room. Yoshi was already on his way to the bedroom as the man’s body hit the floor, shattered skull cracking against polished boards, feet kicking as if he were swimming across the wood. A thin finger of smoke drifted from the hole in the back of his head.
Yoshi shot the broken-wrist man in the face as he rushed from the bedroom, iron-thrower bucking in his hand. The man crumpled like wax tossed into a fire. Stepping into the bedroom, Yoshi leveled the smoking weapon at the last intruder’s head. The man stood and backed away, tried to simultaneously cover his face and put his hands into the air. Knees pressed together, hunched over, pleading eyes shining through splayed fingers.
“Don’t,” he begged. “Don’t…”
Hana rose from the ruins of the bed, cheek purpling, hair tangled about her eye, leather patch askew on her face. Half breathing, half sobbing, she limped to her brother’s side, holding her wrist, already bruised. Reaching out, she gently covered the barrel, pressed Yoshi’s aim to the floor. He frowned at her as she took the ’thrower from his hands.
“Oh, thank you, girl,” the man said. “Amaterasu bless you—”
Hana turned and fired into the man’s crotch.
He dropped like a stone, screaming, clutching the bloody hole between his legs. Falling forward onto his face, he curled into a ball and screamed again; a high-pitched, vibrato wail that tore his throat raw. Hana kicked him onto his back, planted her foot on his chest and aimed the iron-thrower at his forehead. Daken prowled into the room, coiled around her leg. Her voice was a low-pitched growl.
“Who are you?”
“Gendo,” the man gasped. “Gendo!”
