by Jay Kristoff
Kin heard his father’s voice, the knowing rebuke amidst the workshop’s thrum. The words he’d heard so many times, the simple rote that had been as much a part of his life as breathing. And in that moment, he finally understood their truth.
Skin is strong.
Flesh is weak.
“Godsdamn you, Kin,” the old man whispered. “Godsdamn you to the hells.”
The boy watched the light in the old man’s eyes fade as the blacksleep dragged Daichi down into unconsciousness. He felt pale hands on his shoulders, insectoid clicking as eight silver arms encircled him, holding him tight.
“I’m sure they will,” he said.
51
THE QUIET DARK
Michi sheared through the ceiling of Aisha’s chambers and down into a spray of bright red. Her chainkatana parted a head from its shoulders as she tumbled into a crouch, taking a second foe’s legs off at the knees. Metallic screeching. Spattered walls. Rising into a faceful of silver needles.
The air about her sang, whipped into bright, cutting notes, pain behind it. Stepping backward, she lashed out with the chainwakizashi, heard jagged teeth sparking on metal, blinking the blood from her lashes. Gasping, eyes burning, sweat slick on her skin, gown weighing her down like the air in a tomb.
They had the seeming of demons: featureless faces, bodies clad in skintight, gleaming brown, long skirts studded with fat, gleaming buckles, eight impossibly thin arms arrayed about each in a gleaming halo. But Michi saw mechabacii on their chests, recognized them from the palanquin at the sky-docks, and she knew at last the hell they’d been spat from.
“Guildsmen,” she hissed.
The things lunged with those silver limbs, terrifyingly fast, cutting into her right arm and knocking the katana away. Michi’s riposte with the wakizashi opened one along its belly, up into its chest, and the thing shrieked, distorted and metallic, stumbling backward and trying to staunch the glistening sausage-flow of innards bulging from the rend.
The final Guildsman filled the air with silver, Michi shifting onto her back foot as needles whipped and whistled about her. She crouched low, aimed a sweeping kick at its ankles, and hampered by the buckles and skirts, the Guildsman was forced backward. Its heel hit a puddle of blood, and with a squeak across polished pine, it lost balance. Spinning on the spot, Michi hurled the chainwakizashi at the thing’s chest, punching through the mechabacus with the shrieking saw of steel teeth and a rain of brightly colored sparks.
The Guildsman stared at the blade mutely, sinking to its knees. Retrieving her chainkatana from the bloody ground, Michi swung it without ceremony. The thing tumbled forward, headless, silver limbs twitching as if in a fit.
“Michi,” said a voice. “Thank the gods.”
She saw her then, throat seizing tight, and it was all she could do to choke out a reply.
“Aisha…”
She lay on a grand oaken bed, red silk pulled up to her chin, pillows all about her. Tomo, her small black-and-white terrier, sat beside her, growling even as his little tail wagged. Machines were arrayed on either side of her; towering contraptions set with dials and gauges and bellows, transistors and vacuum tubes. Michi dashed across the room, sheathing the blade at her waist, grabbing Aisha’s hand.
“No time to explain, we have to move…”
She tugged hard, trying to drag Aisha from her bed. The Lady flopped forward, hair across her face, a deadweight sack of meat and bones. The silk sheet slipped away from her chin, bunched about her waist, and Michi realized with growing horror that the machines at her bedside, the cables spilling from their outputs … all of them were snaking across the floor, up onto the bed, and from there …
Into Aisha.
Into her arms. Into the bayonet studs puncturing her flesh. Into the device laid upon her chest, thin brass ribs and diodes, the bellows in the machine beside her moving up and down in time with her breath.
“My gods…” Michi whispered, pressing Aisha back into the pillows. “What have they done to you?”
“Saved my life.”
Her voice was hollow, an almost imperceptible reverberation at the end of every word.
“Forcing my heart to beat, my lungs to breathe.” Her eyes gleamed with the beginnings of tears. “Amaterasu, protect me…”
The tears broke, spilling over her lashes and down pallid cheeks.
“I can’t feel anything, Michi.” Aisha’s voice became a whisper, choked and tiny. “My brother, he…” She screwed her eyes shut. “I can’t feel anything below my neck…”
“No,” Michi breathed. “No, that can’t be. I saw you at the sky-docks.”
“Propped up like a corpse in its box. Gagged behind my breather. Plugged into that accursed chair and the contraption beneath. All for show.”
“But you were seen on the balcony…”
Aisha’s eyes flickered to one of the machines; a vertical trolley with a pyramid of wheels flanking either side, lined with gleaming buckles and belts.
“They take me out on the balcony in that,” she whispered. “Strapping me in and trundling me into the sun. Just long enough that a stray courtier or bushiman could see me, to quash any rumors of my death. They were going to haul me to my wedding in it.”
“Good gods…”
Michi took Aisha’s hand, but it was cold and limp as corpse flesh. The Lady’s skin was pale, run through with blue veins, fingers so thin they looked like twigs. Michi looked up and down the bed, tears spilling down through powder and kohl and blood to patter upon the sheets like rain.
In the distance, a hollow boom rocked the city, screams ringing through the night. Aisha’s eyes flickered to the window.
“What is happening out there?”
“I don’t know. I think the Kagé are attacking Kigen. But they’ve drawn Hiro’s forces away from the palace. I can get you out of here.”
“I cannot lift a finger, love.” Aisha looked into Michi’s eyes. “I cannot feel a thing.”
“No, it’s these machines.” Michi whirled on the banks of equipment, desperate eyes roaming the impossible stretch of diode and cog and cable. “They’ve stopped you moving. The Guild have tricked you. They’ve just made you think—”
“I felt it, Michi,” Aisha said. “I felt it when Yoritomo broke my neck.”
“No. That’s not true. It can’t be.”
“She got away?” Light flared in Aisha’s eyes, hot and desperate. “Yukiko? She and the thunder tiger escaped?”
“Hai,” Michi nodded, blinked back burning tears. “The people sing songs about her, Aisha. Arashi-no-odoriko, they call her.”
“Stormdancer,” Aisha breathed. “It was worth it, then.”
A gurgling intake of breath tore Michi’s eyes away, down to the Guildsman slumped against the wall. It held an armful of its own innards, spilling purple and wet from its torn gut, the sundered mechabacus coughing counting beads into its lap. Michi glanced from the Guildsman to the tubes in Aisha’s chest and arms. She snatched up her chainkatana, murder in her eyes.
The Guildsman looked up at her approach, wet breath rattling in its lungs. It keeled over, choking, clawing at its back. And with a sound like breaking eggshells, the silver orb on its spine split open, and a fist-sized metallic object tumbled out onto the floorboards.
Michi stepped back, fearing some kind of explosive. But the object unfurled eight tiny clockwork legs, stared at her with a red, glowing eye.
“Tang!Tang!Tang!Tang!” sang the spider-drone, as if outraged at the murder of its mother. Michi stepped forward and struck, scattering the floorboards with torn clockwork and a shower of bright blue sparks.
“They know,” Aisha whispered. “They know you are here. They will be coming.”
“Let them,” Michi hissed.
“I will not have you die for me.”
“Who said anything about—”
Michi heard it before she felt it; a distant rumble, as if a long-slumbering giant was yawning and stretching in his cradle benea
th the earth. The ground trembled, the whole palace shaking, dust drifting from the eaves. Little Tomo yowled at the sky, hopped in small circles on the bedclothes. Michi ran to the bed and threw herself over Aisha, holding her tight as the palace shook on its foundations, windows cracking at the corners. She lay there until the earthquake died, trying not to notice the smell of metal and grease seeping from her mistress’s pores.
“The gods are angry,” Aisha breathed. “The reckoning comes.”
“Aisha, I have to get you out of here.”
“Will you carry me, Michi-chan? All by yourself?”
They heard a distant booming; heavy weight pounding against the iron-shod doors to the bedchambers. Shouted demands to open in the name of various clanlords. Tiger. Phoenix. Dragon.
“You cannot bring these machines, Michi.” Aisha was looking at her now, tears gone. “They are my lungs. They are my heart. Without them, I would have gone to the peace I earned long ago.”
“But I can’t just leave you here!”
“No.”
Aisha looked into her eyes, a small, sad smile on her face.
“No, you cannot.”
Michi blinked, lips parted as she tried to breathe. “You can’t ask me that…”
“I would do it myself.” A bitter smile. “But if I could wield the blade, there would be no call for its mercy.”
“Aisha, no…”
“No wedding. No Shōgun.” Aisha licked at dry, cracked lips. “Do not leave me like this, love. They have picked over my bones enough. Dragged me from the quiet dark into wretched daylight. Show them I am theirs no longer, Michi. Tell them I am done.”
Michi couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see for the tears.
“I can’t…”
“The last of Kazumitsu’s seed, that’s what they called me. As if that’s all I was. Just a womb to produce another heir for this cursed empire. And do you know what they did, Michi? Gods, could anyone begin to imagine?”
Aisha stared into space, her voice paling to a whisper.
“I was too fragile to receive Hiro’s seed in the usual fashion. And he found no lust for me in my current condition. But the line of Kazumitsu needed its precious son. The Guild needed to cement their Shōgun’s legitimacy. So do you know what they used?” She gritted her teeth, spit the words. “A metal tube. A handful of lubricant. As if I were cattle, Michi. As if I were livestock.”
“My gods…”
“Lord Izanagi, deliver me.” Aisha turned her eyes to the ceiling, voice cracking. “Have mercy upon me, great Maker. If never before this moment, take mercy upon me now.”
“Aisha, I can’t…”
“You can.”
“I can’t.”
“You must.”
Michi held her breath, squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head over and over. She heard the distant sound of heavy blows on iron-shod doors. Splitting timbers.
“I asked when you raised your hand to me, remember?” Aisha said. “I told you I would ask everything of you. I asked if you would give all. Do you remember?”
“I r-remember.”
“Don’t make me beg, Michi. Give me that much.”
“Oh, gods…”
A breathless hush fell over the room, a stillness, broken only by the hiss and click of accursed machines. The machines that damned Aisha to this half-life, bid her languish in the gloom, violated by monstrosities. Michi clenched her teeth, forced herself to suck in one shuddering lungful, tasting smoke and blood, metal and grease, the bile of hatred.
Tears spilled from Aisha’s eyes. “I am so afraid…”
Michi cupped her cheek in one bloody palm, fingers trembling.
“It will be all right, Aisha.”
The woman closed her eyes, reached down and found a calm, long and quiet and deep. Just the slow rise and fall of her chest, the deep void behind her eyes, dark as the womb where first she slumbered. She opened her eyes, and Michi saw strength there, the old strength that had defied a nation.
“Tell me good-bye, Michi-chan.”
Michi leaned down and kissed her eyes, one after the other, salt on her lips. Aisha kept them closed, even after the kisses had ended, her face as serene as if she were sleeping.
“Good-bye, my Lady,” Michi said.
The hair needle sliced through Aisha’s skin, the unfeeling flesh above her pale, blue-scrawled wrists. Once. Twice. A dozen times. No beauty to it. No art. But no pain either.
Blood welled and flowed, sluggish and thick, bright upon the gleaming gold in Michi’s hand. The machines beside the bed shuddered, groaning as if unwilling to let her go. Aisha’s eyes remained closed, a soft slippage from torture into peaceful slumber. Not the gentle deliverance of a woman passing in her bed, surrounded by loved ones after a life well-lived. Not a savior’s death. Not a hero’s.
But at least it was quiet.
Quiet and dark.
Michi forced herself to watch, eyes locked on Aisha’s face. And after an age, an eon, an eternity filled with the shudder and moans of those awful machines, there was a soft exhalation. Gentle as a mother’s hands. And at last, in the end, there came stillness.
And tears.
52
ILLUMINATION
The snare was set, bait moving, quarry drawing close.
Akihito crouched behind a pile of packing crates, a clay bottle full of chi in one hand, tetsubo in the other. At the sound of approaching boots, he nodded to the other Kagé across the alley. Little Butcher dashed around the corner, a kaleidoscope of profanity spewing from her lips, half a dozen bushimen thundering behind her. A hissing, lumbering Iron Samurai followed, spewing chi from his power unit, ō-yoroi painted the white of old bones. Six Kagé dropped from their perches above, nagamaki spears pinning the bushimen to the floor. Akihito rose from his niche and hurled the chi bottle at the Samurai’s chest.
Terror of the battlefield those ō-yoroi suits might be, but in the cramped confines of Kigen’s labyrinth, the loss of peripheral vision under those bone-white helms was all the advantage the Shadows needed. The Iron Samurai stepped back, bringing his chainswords up to guard as a Kagé appeared from cover and tossed his hand flare.
The man screamed as he ignited, beating at the flames unfurling across his golden tabard, seething up under his faceplate and blistering the skin beneath. Akihito swung his tetsubo in a double-handed grip, nearly knocking the samurai’s head off his shoulders. The soldier toppled backward, blood spraying between his helm’s iron tusks.
Akihito leaned down with a wince, snatched up the fallen samurai’s chainkatana as the Kagé gathered around. Two more of their number had fallen in the fight, neither one of them much more than boys. The guards were moving in bigger patrols, fighting harder—any advantage they had in surprise was fading fast. Akihito knew it wouldn’t be long before they met Iron Samurai sweeping the streets in orderly phalanxes, and any edge the Kagé ambush tactics gave would be lost. Hopefully, they’d bought Daichi enough time.
“All right.” Akihito looked at the sky. “Time to fall back. Everyone split up and make your way to the arena. Our ride will pick us up there. Go.”
The Kagé moved out, pausing at the alley mouth before slipping into the streets and scattering like dry leaves. Akihito was getting ready to move when a smoke-gray shape dropped from an awning overhead, peering at him with piss-yellow eyes.
“Mreowwwwl,” it said.
Akihito looked on in astonishment as the ugliest tomcat in Kigen city brushed up against his legs, purring like a tiny earthquake.
“Daken?”
* * *
Seimi raised the blowtorch in front of Yoshi’s face, turned the fuel nozzle and sparked the flint, a burst of smoking heat flaring before their eyes. The boy was trying his best to hold his nerve, but Seimi could see it in the clenched jaw, the pupils dilated to pits, the way each breath made his whole body shake.
It was beautiful.
Seimi leaned close. “I’m the one who did your boyfriend, you know.”
Yoshi lashed out with his forehead, but Seimi flinched back, sidestepping the spit sprayed in his direction.
“He lasted a loooong time, considering.” Seimi grinned like the cat with the cream. “Must have really cared about you to stand tall that distance. The heart weeps.”
The few Scorpion Children who’d stayed to enjoy the show chuckled in the dark around him. Seimi was a master of the snip and clip; he’d once made an informer last six days in the shackles. Not out of any need, understand—the man had begun singing after thirty minutes. No, Seimi had done it just to see if he could.
He leaned close again, inhaling the fear, savoring it on teeth and tongue. And then he sat cross-legged at the boy’s feet and lifted the blowtorch like an orchestra conductor before the music swelled.
“They’re going to tell stories about you, boy. Stories to frighten their children.”
Seimi heard scuffling at his back. One of the brothers shouting a warning. And then there was only blinding pain, a knife of burning ice thrust into his neck. He turned with a cry and she stabbed him again, long-nosed pliers ripping his carotid wide, painting the air bright red.
Blood was smeared over her features, spilling from the ruined socket where her left eye had been. But she’d torn away the leather patch covering the other side of her face, and beneath the scarred brow, above the cheek bisected by a long, broken-bottle scar, burned a round, beautiful eye—luminous, glittering like rose-colored quartz.
“Don’t you touch my brother,” she said.
* * *
“It’s in you,” her father was saying. “You gaijin trash. The white devils are in you. But I can see them. I can get them out…”
He leaned in close, holding the broken bottle up to her right eye, jagged edge reflected in that gentle, glowing pink.
“Da, no!” She shook her head, eyes closed tight. “No, no!”
“I can get them out,” he said.
She felt the bottle sink into her skin, broken glass scraping bone, and she screwed her eyes shut tighter and screamed as loud as she could. And then she heard him gasp, and something wet was falling on her face, and he was reeling off her and staggering to his feet, clutching the chopsticks protruding from his neck. And as he turned, Yoshi thrust another one like a dagger, burying it deep in his eye.
