Endsinger: The Lotus War Book Three

by Jay Kristoff

  *YUKIKO?*

  Isao stumbled and Yoshi dragged him to his feet, risked a glance behind him and saw the chasm spreading closer, closer, swallowing the locomotive, twisted carriages tilting and tumbling down into the bottomless maw.

  I’m a friend of Yukiko’s! My sister Hana rides the arashitora called Kaiah!

  The lead thunder tiger wheeled around, swooped low, followed by her packmates. Yoshi grabbed Isao’s hand, ran toward them, stumbling and almost falling, screaming with his voice and his mind and waving his free hand high.

  Here! Over here!

  The earth bucked, threw him forward, crashing face-first into the dirt. Yoshi gasped, spat out black soil, scrambling up onto his hands and knees, throwing a desperate glance over his shoulder as the chasm yawned behind him, the earth shivering and groaning and dropping away beneath him. Isao fell down into the dark, his screams fading to nothing. And as Yoshi began to fall beside him, as weightlessness seized him and the bitter, bone-shattering chill seeping up from that impossible hole stabbed his heart to stilling, he felt an impact at his back, the thunderous beat of mighty wings. He was torn skyward, the arashitora grasping him in its claws. The ground dropped away as they soared higher, chasm yawning wide and groaning its hunger, denied at the last by Raijin’s daughters. Filling the skies all around him with their cries; a moment of sheer beauty amidst total calamity.

  Yoshi grasped handfuls of feathers, crawled up between the arashitora’s shoulder blades, refusing to look down. Breath ragged. His whole body trembling.

  Balls of the fucking Maker God …

  *INDEED.*

  Yoshi put his arms around the thunder tiger’s neck, fighting to regain control of his pulse, his trembling, freezing limbs. He looked down into the pit that had swallowed Isao whole, unable to suppress a shudder. The beast’s warmth banished the chill of that awful abyss, and gratitude swelled up to replace the terror, flooding over his edges and out into the beast’s mind.

  My thanks, great one. Truly.

  *GREAT ONE?*

  Faint amusement bubbled in the female’s thoughts.

  *YOU I WILL LIKE.*

  Yoshi looked around at the pack, all sleek ferocity, feathers of snow white and jet black. Behind them, just in front of the enormous ash cloud rising out of the collapsing Stain, Yoshi could see a Guild sky-ship, engines roaring with the strain of full burn, tiny figures on its deck.

  *DO NOT FEAR. THEY FRIENDS. WE CAME HERE SEARCHING FOR OUR MALES. FOUND THEM CHASED BY MEN IN METAL SUITS.*

  Her growl was a vibration up his thighs into his belly.

  *BUT THEY CHASE NO MORE.*

  Yoshi ran one hand down the thunder tiger’s neck.

  Can I ask your name?

  *SHAI. SHAKHAN OF THE EVERSTORM PACK.*

  Where are you headed?

  *DO NOT KNOW. SEARCHING FOR YUKIKO AND OUR KHAN.*

  They’ll be in Yama. The Kitsune city to the north.

  *MUST BRING NEWS OF RISING DARK. HORRORS WITHIN.*

  Well, Yama was where we were headed.

  *INDEED.*

  If I ask nice, you figure I might trouble you for a ride?

  *HOW NICE CAN MONKEY-CHILD ASK?*

  Well, if you were a pretty boy with prettier lips, I might think of something fancy. But I think I’ll have to do with “pretty please,” oh mighty Shai, Shakhan of the Everstorm pack.

  *MIGHTY SHAI.*

  Amusement rippled in the Kenning, warm as a new spring breeze.

  * YOU I WILL DEFINITELY LIKE.*

  * * *

  The elevator doors split apart with a hiss, iron grinding in buckled furrows. Kin limped out onto the Earthcrusher bridge, the air filled with the smell of burned insulation, chi exhaust and blood. All around him, Guildsmen lay on the floor, heads beating against the decking with that off-beat rhythm, arms and legs twitching.

  Kin and Shinji made their way down to the deck, Kin’s eyes fixed on the figure sitting in the pilot’s chair. That perfect, childish face, eyes aglow, blood leaking from his collar—the man Kin had called Uncle. Second Bloom Kensai.

  No, Kin reminded himself. First Bloom now …

  Shinji grabbed a piece of broken iron railing, tore it free, standing beside Kensai’s prone form as Kin thumbed the latches at his collar, watching the throat unfold like a flower, unfastening the lengths of cable at the child’s mouth and pulling the helmet free.

  It wasn’t a monster waiting for him behind the mask, not a horror twisted and deformed. Just an old man, eyes creased at the edges, slack jowls, balding pate dotted with liver spots. Kensai’s eyes were wide, pupils fixed, and he continued to bash his head into the harness, his mechabacus echoing the stuttering beat spitting from every Guildsman’s chest.

  “Do you want to do it?” Shinji proffered the iron bar. “Or should I?”

  “Why would we kill him?”

  “He’s the First Bloom of the Lotus Guild. He killed Maseo and Bo. Why the hells would we keep him alive?”

  Kin looked out to the smoking ruins of Yama city. He thought of the arashitora cut to pieces by the Earthcrusher’s defenses, the brave samurai who’d crashed their ships into the Earthcrusher to try and halt its advance, the countless soldiers who must have lost their lives. And at the last, he thought of Daichi. This victory the old man had bought with his life.

  “For all he’s done, Kensai deserves justice in the cold light of day. Not a clumsy murder in the dark.”

  Kin replaced Kensai’s helm to spare the old man’s skull further punishment. Then he began unfastening the pilot’s harness, the pain of his burns a distant, cutting ache.

  “Help me with him, brother.”

  Shinji stood, uncertain, the air filled with the stuttering beat of Guildsmen skulls on metal grilles. But at last, he took hold, straining with the weight, and the pair hauled the First Bloom out of the pilot’s rig. Half carrying, half dragging him to the elevator, the boys staggered out into the loading bay, finally reaching broad double doors marked with diagonal stripes of yellow paint. The hydraulics were disabled, and the pair propped Kensai against the wall as they spun the locking wheel, finally cracking the doors open and blinking out into blinding light.

  Kin winced, held his breath, the poisoned air tasting impossibly sweet after the Earthcrusher’s choking confines. He looked out over Yama, the smashed walls of Kitsune-jō all around them, the bushimen and samurai moving out of cover slowly, weapons raised. Smoke and ash, fire and blood, the ground trembling as an aftershock from the colossal quake hit the city.

  Ruined walls toppled to dust, Kin and Shinji crouching low with Kensai between them as the city shivered and fitted, just like the man they clutched between them.

  “Gods above,” Kin breathed, eyes roaming the carnage. “Just look at it all…”

  Shinji extended the loading ramp down to the broken ground. Palace guardsmen were surrounding the Earthcrusher, crossbows raised, cadres of bushimen preparing to advance.

  “Hold!” Kin called.

  “You give no commands here, Guildsman!” A tall Kitsune man stood amidst the rubble, broad as a doorway, a general’s sigil on his tabard. “You stand within the walls of Kitsune-jō, the Fortress of the Fox and our Lord, Daimyo Isamu!”

  “We are rebels!” Kin shouted. “We have Shateigashira Kensai here as our prisoner!”

  “An obvious ploy.” The man spat on the ground. “You think us fools?”

  “A ploy? Who the hells do you think sabotaged this thing?” Shinji slapped one palm against the Earthcrusher’s hull. “Didn’t you notice someone stopped it stone dead forty feet from your Daimyo’s bedroom door? Or did you think it ran out of fucking chi?”

  “Quite a mouth you’ve got on you, boy.”

  “That’s just what your daughter said!”

  The general laughed. “Quite a pair too. What’s your name?”

  Kin cut off Shinji’s reply. “My name is Kin, General. My exuberant friend is Shinji.”

  “I have heard your name. This very day, in
fact…”

  The man lowered his head in a slow bow.

  “I am Ginjiro, general of the Kitsune Army.”

  Kin did his best to return the bow with Kensai’s weight on his arm, the pain of his burns rearing up beneath the fading opiate haze. “My honor, General.”

  “Is that really the Second Bloom of Kigen city in your arms?”

  “Technically, he’s First Bloom of the entire Guild, now Tojo is dead.”

  General Ginjiro signaled for his men to stand down, a cold smile on his lips.

  “Then I bid you welcome to Kitsune-jō.”

  * * *

  Yukiko and Buruu swooped toward the Kitsune fortress, Kaiah and their other packmates beside them. Limping through the skies behind came a few wounded Kitsune ships and the battle-scarred hulk of the Kurea, a bloodied and bruised Blackbird at the helm. The city had been decimated, pockets of fighting still ongoing between Kitsune bushimen and Tora shreddermen. With no way out of the city, the Tora had barricaded themselves on Last Isle, uncertainty rising in the wake of the earthquake, the destruction of First House, the rise of those demons from the pit.

  The gaijin army had been halfway through bridging the Amatsu when the quake hit, their structure collapsing into tar-black waters. Now they stood amassed on the eastern banks, their commanders pacing along the black shores as their engineers began work again. Only one among them walked with his head bowed, swathed in guilt.

  But Yukiko only had thoughts for the blind Inquisitor, locked in the fortress dungeons. A man who’d hold all the answers, who could tell them how to defeat the darkness spreading from the ruins of the Stain.

  The Earthcrusher loomed out of the smoke ahead, the behemoth listing, its engines silenced. It had smashed its way through the outer walls of Kitsune-jō, but fallen short of the mark. Fox clan soldiers had surrounded it, blades glittering in the light of the fading day. Snow still fell in fitful flurries.

  Yukiko felt Buruu tense beneath her, falling instinctively into the space behind his eyes. And then she saw him, picking his way through the ruins at the Earthcrusher’s feet, supporting what looked like the Second Bloom of Kigen city in his arms. Soldiers closing in all about him.

  Rage flared in her heart. Rage at his betrayal. At everything it had cost her.

  “KIIIIIIN!”

  Buruu roared along with her, diving from the skies with the Everstorm pack behind them, her katana drawn. The boy beside Kin quailed, released his grip on the Second Bloom, turning and running as the Shateigashira collapsed. Kin’s eyes were wide, but she seized hold of his limbs, holding him frozen to the spot as they swooped in to land, broken rubble and shale beneath their talons, whipping dust and ash into the air.

  She was off Buruu’s back in a blinking, the katana in her hand gleaming in the fading light. Drawing the weapon back, picturing Isao, Takeshi, Atsushi, Akihito, Michi, Daichi, Aisha, the soldiers who’d died defending this city, the ideal of freedom this boy spat on with every breath he could muster. Sorrow in his mind, bursting the banks of his subconscious, rimming his eyes as she drew within striking distance, knuckles white on the blade Daichi had named for her Anger, given to her by the very man this boy had sent to his end.

  And without a word, without giving one more breath of herself to this wretched little bastard, she stabbed toward his heart.

  The bright note of steel on steel, a burst of sparks as her blow was deflected, clipping Kin’s shoulder and giving birth to a spray of blood. Yukiko turned, eyes wide, Buruu roaring, faint incomprehension swelling in her thoughts.

  General Ginjiro stood before her, warclub in his hand.

  “Hold, Stormdancer.”

  “Stand aside, General,” Yukiko growled, “before I lay you down.”

  “I am pleased you still live, girl.”

  Four thunder tigers gathered at Yukiko’s back, filling the air with menacing growls.

  “Step. Aside.”

  The general seemed unfazed.

  “This is Kitsune-jō. The Fortress of the Fox. Daimyo Isamu is lord here. Not Stormdancer Yukiko.”

  “Daimyo Isamu is dead! All of them dead! Because of this traitor!” Her eyes flashed, staring at the still-paralyzed Kin. “I could smash him open with but a thought—”

  “And grieve that second’s folly for the rest of your days, girl.”

  “It wouldn’t be folly, it’d be justice! He betrayed us! Betrayed Daichi!”

  “Kaori’s father.”

  … THIS MAN HAS NEVER MET KAORI.

  Yukiko blinked, hesitation breaking through the rage.

  “How do you know Kaori? Daichi?”

  “Misaki sent missive wirelessly from the deck of the Truth Seeker barely ten minutes past. She returns from the ruins of First House, the remnants of a Kagé sabotage squad with her. Their leader, a woman named Kaori, bid us spread the word amongst the rebels and other loyalists here. The boy named Kin is not to be touched.”

  “Kaori hates Kin. She wants him dead more than I…”

  The general stroked his beard. “Seems this boy and your Daichi formulated a plan between them. A stratagem unknown even to Daichi’s daughter. A ruse to get the boy aboard the Earthcrusher and stop it from within.”

  Ginjiro glanced up at the lopsided goliath, then back at the bare forty feet of ground between the machine and the inner walls of Kitsune-jō.

  “Fortunately for us, it seems…”

  … COULD IT BE?

  “That’s impossible…”

  “Says the lowborn girl leading a pack of thunder tigers.”

  Yukiko’s katana fell from nerveless fingers. She looked at Kin, anger slipping away as she searched his thoughts. All of it there for her to see, if only she’d taken the time to look. Kin and Daichi hunched over their chess game. His infiltration of Chapterhouse Kigen, then the Earthcrusher itself. The agony of his burns, the ’thrower wound in his thigh, all he’d risked and suffered laid out in the glittering pathways of his mind. But above all, reflected in the tears in both their eyes was the moment she’d accused him of betrayal in Kigen arena. When she’d thought Kin sold her to Yoritomo and been proven wrong, now proven so again, his words then echoing now in her thoughts, like a rusted knife in her chest.

  “I gave you my word. I gave Buruu his wings. I would never betray you, Yukiko. Never.”

  “Oh gods, Kin…”

  She released her hold on his body, and he sagged, the heat of his burns flaring blood-red in his mind. Despite it all, he still stood, eyes filled not with the pain of his body, but the pain of a single thought—that again, and despite everything he’d done, she’d thought the worst of him.

  She stepped toward him, hands fluttering helplessly at her sides.

  “Oh gods, Kin, I’m so sorry…”

  The wind howled in the frozen gulf between them. A single foot and a thousand miles wide.

  He looked down at the swelling at her midriff, wiped the tears from his eyes.

  “So am I…”

  47

  A GRAND WAY TO DIE

  THERE IS NO TIME NOW, FOR GRIEF.

  They sat perched on the highest point in Yama city—the lopsided head of the Earthcrusher—looking out over the ruins of the Kitsune capital. Events of the last hour played over and over in her mind; a broken sound-box breathing a white-noise hum.

  She’d marched straight into the dungeons, Hana at her side, intent on questioning the Inquisitor and finding some truth in all this. But the warrens had collapsed in the earthquake following the destruction of First House; the Inquisitor’s cell and dozens of others had been buried under tons of fresh rubble. Yukiko had stood before the wall of crumbled masonry, felt beyond the ruins with the Kenning, searching for those pitch-black eyes, that empty smile, any sign of life. She found nothing. A desolation, devoid even of corpse-rats. Despair in her heart, she realized any answers the Inquisitor held had died with him.

  General Ginjiro had ordered the helpless Guildsmen removed from the Earthcrusher and placed under lock and key
. Kin had begged his brethren be taken to the hospice, and with no dungeons to lock them inside, the general had acquiesced. Kin had overseen the operation despite his injuries, unplugging each Guildsman from their mechabacus by hand, ending their convulsions, helping them to their feet, bleary-eyed and trembling. It was only after the last Guildsman had been removed that he’d allowed himself to be taken for treatment.

  All the while, he’d not said a word to her.

  She’d returned to the crash-site of the Honorable Death, unsurprised to find Hiro gone. Tears smudging her face, she’d collected Michi’s body, winging her back to Kitsune-jō. She was laid in the gardens beneath white sheets and black snow—just one among hundreds, their ranks swelling by the second.

  Yukiko knew they’d have to deal with the gaijin soon to collect Akihito—or at least what was left of him. But for the moment, it was all she could do to stop it spilling out of her in a flood without ceasing. Here in the quiet, loss amplified by the thunder tigers mourning their fallen brethren, the girl circling astride Kaiah above, mourning her love.

  Grief.

  SORROW WASTES TIME WE DO NOT HAVE.

  I can’t help it, Buruu. If anyone was going to make it through this, I thought it would be Michi. She was fiercer than a thousand sea dragons. And gods, poor Akihito …

  ALL THIS WAS PRELUDE. THE REAL BATTLE HAS NOT EVEN BEGUN.

  She stepped into the Kenning and felt her way south, a headache kick-starting itself somewhere in the back of her skull. She could sense the impossible darkness swelling around the Stain’s ruins, writhing, seething, the faintest of echoes in her mind, a broken, skull-bending rhythm trying to draw her in. She pulled herself back into her brother’s warmth. Shivering.

  You can’t even imagine what’s growing down there …

  I HAVE A NOTION.

  How do we even begin to fight it? A hellgate, Buruu. A wound in the world leading right down into Yomi. The demons we fought here were nothing. The things crawling from that hole …

  WE SHOULD RUN, THEN? LEAVE THIS PLACE TO DIE?

  We can’t do that.

  SUKAA AND THE OTHERS WOULD SEE IT AS JUSTICE.

  And what about you?