by Jay Kristoff
Shin and Shou had sat at his table. He had welcomed them into his city. And now they were burning that city to cinders. But if Kigen was truly his, if the throne, the mantle, the Way held any meaning for him at all, surely he owed it more than a token defense? Surely he owed the people below, his people, all he had to give?
Hiro clenched his teeth, enamel grinding, a burning glare set on the towering sky-ship laying all about it to waste. He turned to the Tigress captain.
“Send word to the Kazumitsu’s Honor.” He nodded to the other Tiger vessel floating off their starboard. “Send to the Guild ships also. Full attack.”
“Hai!” the captain barked.
Engines kicked into the red, the Tigress shuddering as she swung her snout around and lumbered toward the enemy. The Phoenix corvettes were swift to intercept, filling the sky between Hiro and his quarry. Crews manning the Tigress’s batteries opened up, and chug!chug!chug!chug! came the thunder of the shuriken-throwers. The corvettes returned fire, men on both sides became limp, lifeless meat, washing the decks with their insides, red as lotus blooms. Hiro ducked low, a shuriken whistling over his head, two more spanging off his spaulders and breastplate. A Phoenix corvette dropped from the sky, crashed into the walls of Kigen arena. Another collided with the Guild ship Red Bloom, clipping its inflatable and exploding into flame, the falling ironclad immolating a city block below.
Screams of pain from the streets beneath him. Prayers for mercy.
And there he stood, with none to give.
The Phoenix corvettes came about for a second attack as the Tiger fleet drew within range of the Floating Palace’s heavy ’throwers. The barrage hit Hiro’s ships like hail in winter’s bleakest hour, tearing holes through the Honor and littering its decks with dead. Another Phoenix corvette burst into flames and exploded in midair, momentum stringing its remnants out along the sky like fireworks on a feast day. Engines roaring, men around Hiro screaming for coordinates, for ammunition, for their mothers, lying in puddles of their own guts and clutching the places their limbs were supposed to be. The air filled with gleaming, hissing death, a tempo and percussion of razor-sharp steel and chug!chug!chug!chug! went the music they all danced to, and when it stopped there was only roaring propellers and cries of pain and lifeless shapes staring at starless skies. Eyes and mouths open. Seeing and saying nothing at all.
“We can’t get close, my Lord!” the captain cried. “Our inflatable is already ruptured! I can’t keep her aloft for long!”
“Get on the radio to Kensai!” Hiro roared. “We need those ironclads back here!”
“They’re pursuing the Kagé, great Lord!”
“To the Endsinger with the Kagé! If these Phoenix bastards decide to destroy Kigen rather than claim it as their own—”
As if bidden, the Floating Palace changed course, swinging away from the Tiger palace and bringing itself to bear on the smoking chimney stacks to the west of the blazing bay.
The refinery …
The ground around the chi refinery glittered with blood-red eyes and firelight reflections, gleaming on the suits of dozens of Guild Purifiers. The Lotusmen were dousing everything in sight with flame-retardant foam, Guild marines spraying burning buildings with black water pumped in from the bay, beating back the inferno from the refinery storage tanks. But if the Floating Palace had any fire-barrage munitions in reserve …
The captain of Kazumitsu’s Honor had sent his ship on a roaring collision course with the Palace, but as she drew close, her inflatable was riddled with heavy ’thrower fire. The ironclad’s return salvo tore great, heaving gouges in the Palace’s own balloon, but its sheer size and number of hydrogen compartments kept the behemoth afloat, droning toward its target. The air was filled with half a dozen Phoenix corvettes, cutting through the rolling smoke, airborne sparks dancing like fireflies.
In a minute, maybe less, the Phoenix would be directly over the refinery.
One barrel would be all it took.
“Captain,” Hiro said. “Set course for the Palace. Ramming speed.”
“… Hai!”
Hiro cursed, licked ashes from his lips. Be this his last breath, he’d take those honorless dogs down to walk with him in the hells. The iron fist at his side clenched, involuntary, thoughts turning to the vengeance he’d now be forever denied. The murder he’d dreamed of, her face upturned to his, terror in her eyes as he closed iron fingers around that pretty throat and squeezed the very life from her body.
And then thunder tore the skies.
The reverb rolling down his spine, familiar as a lover’s fingertips, goosebumps rippling across his skin. Running to the railing. Ashes cracking on his cheeks as he narrowed his eyes, squinted into the fire-clad pall filled with sparks and smoke and screams of the dying.
Looking for them.
Looking for her.
And like a dream, there she was.
“Yukiko…”
* * *
Buruu’s roar cut the sky, talons tearing through the inflatable of a swift Phoenix corvette, sending it tumbling to the earth. Yukiko was pressed low to his back, katana drawn, hair streaming behind her in a cinder wind. The air was filled with shuriken fire, burning sky-ships, Tiger and Guild and Phoenix, all hammering at each other with every ’thrower they had. The city below was ablaze, folk fleeing in screaming droves, the night almost as bright as the day. Chaos. Absolute bloody chaos.
LOVELY WEDDING.
Buruu’s thoughts echoed in the Kenning, underscored with the reverb of psychic trauma in the city below and fatigue from their frantic eight-day flight here. Yukiko’s eyes were full of sand, head heavy as lead, bruised face and pounding skull. Every muscle aching. Every breath burning. Buruu and Kaiah had both given almost everything to get here, but at least they’d made it in time to see. The sight filled her with horror and joy, the fury and bedlam of it all. She had no idea where they’d even begun, but somehow Kin and Daichi and Kaori had done it. Set the wolves upon each other. Torn the wedding night to tatters and Hiro’s dreams of dominion to ruins. She could taste smoke through her grin.
Reaching out through the Kenning’s heat, she felt for the thunder of Kaiah’s psyche, pulled the female arashitora’s thoughts into herself, wincing at the volume. Beneath a pulsing rush of pain against her wall, blood on her lips, she could feel both thunder tigers inside her mind, her thoughts a conduit between each, her skull echoing with the pair’s bloodlust and awe.
I don’t know what the hells is going on here. But unless I’m mad, those Phoenix ships are attacking the city.
—LEAVE MONKEY-CHILDREN TO THEIR SLAUGHTER?—
Buruu growled in response.
THERE ARE INNOCENTS IN THE CITY BELOW.
Buruu is right, we can’t just—
A burst of ’thrower fire gleamed through the smoke toward them, Buruu and Kaiah splitting apart and weaving through the shards. The Tiger and Guild vessels had spotted them, opening up with their batteries alongside the Phoenix ships. Whatever enmity had sprung up between the two clans, it seemed to vaporize in the presence of Yoritomo’s assassin and two full-grown thunder tigers. But glancing at the deck of the monstrous Fushicho flagship, Yukiko could see her crews loading barrage-barrels into firing tubes, priming ignition charges. Picturing the bombardment of the Iishi forest in her mind’s eye, looking at the course they were on, Yukiko felt a cold dread in her gut beside the two burning sparks of life she could now feel with every part of—
They’re going to attack the refinery chi reserves! Kaiah, you keep the smaller ships off our tails long enough for us to deal with the big one!
A low growl was her only response, and Buruu was swooping and rolling through the withering hail of shuriken spewing from the flagship’s flanks. The Tiger and Guild vessels were still pouring on the fire too, a stray burst cutting one pursuing corvette to shreds. Yukiko slipped into the heat behind Buruu’s eyes, felt the thunder of his pulse inside her own chest, clinging to him with all her strength as they wove throug
h the silver rain. She felt herself falling inside him, that familiar totality stretching out to envelope her, infant lightning playing at the tips of her fingers as he opened her mouth and roared. And there in the fire-torn black, the air around her filled with whistling death, his heat beneath her skin and her thoughts within his mind, they felt the warmth of them, the four of them, and found a oneness no other could ever know.
Crashing through a corvette’s inflatable, canvas torn to ribbons, the screeching of propeller blades across the sky. Falling and flying and spinning and swooping, her beak open as he roared and clapped their wings together, blue-white flaring across the severed beauty of their feathers and Raijin Song, Raijin Song, stretching out and taking hold of the night’s hem, tearing it to tatters and the ships filling it alongside, a shock wave from the heart of them smashing the tiny flying things as if they were wrought of glass. Through the spinning fragments, toward the hulking shape of the death writ large over Kigen skies, the Phoenix and their palace of pleasures, now sowing death in great flaming handfuls through the streets below. Kaiah’s roar thrilling them, electricity rippling along her hackles, bellowing in response, the cry for war, the call for blood, blood, blood like rain as they tore another wingless fly from the air.
But to sink in it?
To drown?
Down through the hail, a strike to his shoulder, blood on her feathers, shrieking in rage. Swooping under the belly of the colossal ship, a brief moment of stillness in the shadow below, gravity clutching them cold and trembling as they dragged themselves up the other side, momentum and mass and beautiful, thunderous will ripping them up past the astonished faces of the Phoenix crews, the open howling mouths of two men with painted eyes and beautiful, perfect faces, resplendent in sunflower silk fine enough to die in. Riding a beast of metal and wood and canvas—the dream of monkeys crawled down from the trees, looking to the skies since the day they were born and filled with yearning. To feel the clouds kiss their faces and the wind in their hair and the weak slip of gravity as it fell away like a tiny, mewling thing. A question. Always.
Why not, my friend?
Why not fly?
And they screamed it—the two (four) who were one (one), there at the last, talons outstretched and rending deep, compartment after compartment, the skin of the false-flyer peeled open like ripe fruit and spilling the squeal of escaping hydrogen out in the flooded night. Screamed their throat raw. Screamed for all the world to hear and feel and know. The answer why not, my friend, why not fly.
Because the skies are ours.
Because the sky is mine.
And the fire bloomed in their talons, reflected in their eyes, gleaming amber and bottomless black, trembling in their grip. The tiny handheld flare, just a spark unworthy of the name of flame. How easy would it be to hurl it toward the vapor, like a lover heartsick from a day of solitude, back into its beloved’s arms? And in that marriage, that love, that lust, conflagration would bloom, a shattering as wide and bright as a god’s eye, searing and blistering and mushroom-shaped. An unmaking filled with the scream of Phoenix lords, princelings undone by flame’s bright kiss, their Palace blown to splinters and shards of iron, raining down on fair Kigen like the cruelest storm. Ashes to scatter on the screaming wind, falling like fine snow, swirling amidst the smoke and char and soot and dusting the gutters with all they had been and ever would be.
Not enough left for even a Phoenix to rise from.
How easy would it be?
They dug their knuckles into her temples. Bloodlust pounding in their (her) skull. They had been here before. The sight of three ironclads tumbling from the sky in her (their) mind’s eye. Ayane’s terrified gaze. Takeo’s letter. Her own tears. Kin’s voice echoing in their thoughts.
“And piece by piece I see the Yukiko I know falling away…”
They blinked.
Too easy.
And they saw true. The hundreds of lives aboard the Phoenix flagship. The men and women who were not soldiers or clanlords, samurai or butchers. The servants and engineers, the cabin boys and deckhands. The people who dreamed of beloveds’ arms or children’s smiles, not growling swords and empty thrones—all of them would die if she let the flare fall. If she let herself slip beneath the flood. If she gave anger its head.
Is that what she was? Is that what she’d become?
What her father had died for?
The Floating Palace groaned, her inflatable crumpling under its own weight as hydrogen hissed into the burning night. And with a fierce cry they hurled the flare, not toward the sinking sky-ship, but out into the bay, down into the black water beneath them, the tiny trembling spark swallowed in the dark. The flagship fell, slow if not graceful, the bladder that had once kept her afloat now streaming behind her in tatters. And their voice echoed in their own minds, uncertain where hers ended and his began, his gentle smile on her lips.
LET US HOPE THIS FLOATING PALACE LIVES UP TO ITS NAME.
Kaiah called, a roar filling the empty space before the ship’s thunderous impact into the mouth of the Junsei, the black foaming flow gushing up over the banks in a great rushing wave and dousing the smoldering houses at the water’s edge. The Palace sank down to its railings, scummed water flooding the decks and streaming back out in a hundred waterfalls as the hulk resurfaced, her balloon falling over her like a shroud, steam rising from the banks. Wallowing in her own ruins as the Phoenix corvettes scattered like rats when the corpse runs out. The Phoenix princelings on their knees, smeared in black and screaming with impotent rage. But alive.
Alive.
Through the smoke and billowing flames they wheeled, falling back inside one another again, Buruu and Yukiko, Yukiko and Buruu, the city’s pyre setting their eyes aglow. Lightning flickered in the clouds overhead, through the haze of bitter-black smoke, a pulse setting their own pulses to quickening. The remaining Guild ships had gathered in tight formation, bristling with death—awaiting the girl they all feared. Bated breath, bellows falling still, dry mouths and sweat-soaked flesh hidden beneath skins of gleaming brass. Chattering mechabacii. Chattering mouths. Setting their teeth on edge.
Hackles rising. Smoke in their mouths. Decks crawling with chi-mongers. Bloodlust pulsing, swelling, wanting, spilling from each thunder tiger into the Kenning, amplified and purified, doubling and trebling and feeding upon itself. They stared at this tiny pack of metal insects, blind grubs who thought themselves so far above the hell they forged that its flames would never reach them. Each ship crewed by soldiers and Lotusmen; no innocents here, just killers, all. And through the smoke, they saw it, saw it for the first time—the hulking ironclad daubed in Tiger red, three flags streaming from its stern marked with the Daimyo’s seal.
Through his eyes they gazed, sharp as new pins and twice as bright, onto the choked deck. Through the crowd of little boys in their smoking armor, stained with the color of death, there, there to the littlest boy of all. The boy they had given themselves to. The boy they had loved (she had loved) and the sight of him, daubed corpse-white with his ashen face, set the bloodlust swelling again, gripping her tight, dragging her in. Buruu’s need to kill, pure and primal, rushing over her like a flood. Filling her. Fighting her. Dragging her down to drown.
But she kicked. Fought. Seethed. To pull herself free, rip herself out, back from the oneness and into herself, the taste of her own blood on her lips and the pain flooding through the cracks in her wall. Just herself again. Just Yukiko.
Unwhole.
Buruu reared up into the air, metal wings spread wide, Yukiko sitting up tall on his back. Delirium and vertigo, the sense of her own body for a moment utterly alien, her flesh shivering and cold. The thunder tiger beneath her roared, time slowing to a crawl as she felt the blood flee her face, lips parted as she struggled for breath. Eyes fixed on the tall figure standing on the bow, even now drawing his swords, pointing his chainkatana at her, screaming challenge.
“Hiro,” she breathed.
Lips peeled back from her te
eth. Eyes locked with his. The green of Kitsune jade. The green of lotus fronds. But not the green of the sea, no, not the green she had named them for. Because the seas around this island she called home were red, red as lotus, red as blood, poisoned scarlet by these bastards and their stinking, wretched weed.
She could see Hiro’s face, twisted with rage, gesturing for his samurai to clear a space on the foredeck. To back away, let him stand alone. His words were lost in the drone of the engines, the howl of the flames, but his gestures made his intent clear. Calling Yukiko out. Demanding a duel. Satisfaction. Vengeance. He beat one fist upon his chest—an iron fist—gestured for his samurai to step farther back. Holding his arms wide, eyes locked on the girl and her thunder tiger. Actions speaking louder than any words.
Come on.
He bellowed, pointing his chainkatana at her again.
Come and get me.
Buruu growled, low and long, their hatred spilling into each other and gleaming in his eyes. It could all end. The Guild’s ambitions for Hiro’s rule. The threat of war still looming large over Shima. The storm clouds gathering on distant horizons. All of it could end, here and now.
WHY DO WE FALTER?
Buruu’s thoughts in her head, as always, echoing the deepest recesses of her own.
THE PHOENIX I UNDERSTAND. THERE WERE INNOCENTS ABOARD THAT SHIP. BUT HIRO WANTS YOU DEAD. THE GUILD BACK HIM TO THE HILT. THIS IS KILL OR BE KILLED, YUKIKO.
She struggled for breath, clawing her hair from her eyes.
And then what? If we kill him, the Guild will just choose another puppet. Another thrall.
THIS IS THE PATH YOU CHOSE. THIS IS THE RIVER OF BLOOD I PROMISED.
And weren’t you afraid I would drown in it?
ALL YOU NEED DO IS DIVE IN AND SWIM.
I …
She wiped her fist across her nose, brought it away bloody. Kaiah wheeled through the sky, circling them, roaring again, fairly trembling with anticipation.
