Steel Crow Saga

by Paul Krueger

  She wanted to spit his courtesy and gratitude back in his face. This situation did nothing to change who he was and what he’d done. But she had her orders. She had the weight of her comrades’ sacrifices on her shoulders. And she had a fervent desire not to die here, in a boat with a monster, at the hands of an even bigger monster.

  And that meant becoming a monster in kind.

  “Um, are you going to say something?” Prince Jimuro said. “I just said a lot, and it’s customary to at least say something in re—”

  She forced herself to stand on the speeding boat and turned to face their pursuer full-on. “Stay back, Your Brilliance,” she said. She had finally been pushed to the point where she had nothing left to lose from what she did next. She just had to time it right.

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” the prince said, slipping himself behind her. He looked even paler than usual, though he made an admirable attempt at remaining calm. But all his discipline wasn’t enough to stop his hands from shaking as he brandished her gun. When he saw the way her eyes lingered on his trembling hand, he added: “The weapon is steel and I’m a son of Tomoda. When I lend my final shot to you, it will fly straight.”

  Lending her a bullet from her own gun that he’d stolen, Tala thought ruefully. If that didn’t sum up the fucking Tomodanese. “You won’t need to shoot.”

  He frowned warily. “What do you intend to do?”

  The splintersoul was almost upon them. If he didn’t leap aboard the boat itself, or summon one of his shades onto it, he was surely about to command the shark-shade to open its mouth wide and devour them, bow-to-stern.

  But she’d drawn an imaginary line across the surface of the ocean in her head, and just then the shark crossed it.

  “Dimangan!” she shouted, pointing her finger at the spot of water just behind them. Blue energy spewed from her fingertip in jagged tendrils. Pain ripped through the inside of her skull as something unfolded itself from the deepest corners of her brain. It wasn’t like summoning Beaky. It was altogether more probing, like giving birth to a thought made flesh. With a cry, she dropped to one knee.

  The shade that formed in midair was twelve feet tall, every inch of him covered in ridges of muscle and skin somehow a soft brown even though he hadn’t felt sunlight in years. Shards and spikes of bone studded his body, silver in the moonlight. He faced away from them, so she could see a distinctive pactmark spread across the back of his bald scalp: a pair of blue triangles that lay tip-to-tip, like the wings of a moth.

  With ungainly grace, Dimangan landed hard on the flat head of the shark-shade, crouched forward bestially on his spiny forearms. In the back of her head, Tala felt a great tangle of emotions: Confusion, as he took in the fact that he was surfing on a giant shark and facing down a purple-coated stranger. Fury, as he understood this man meant Tala harm.

  But drowning them both out was the pain that threatened to split open his and her heads alike.

  She gritted her teeth and forced herself to see straight. She had white-knuckled through this before. She could do it again.

  The splintersoul’s thick eyebrows leapt up his forehead as he realized what he was looking at. “Abomination,” he said, horrified.

  And Mang rumbled in an inhuman basso: “You don’t have to be a jerk about it.”

  His hand curled into a fist the size of a chicken, and he threw the right cross to end all right crosses. It caught the splintersoul completely off guard, and he flew face-first into the air.

  The shark-shade instantly evaporated beneath Dimangan’s feet, and he dropped adroitly into the water. He bobbed below the waves, too, but Tala knew better than to worry about him. And sure enough, he resurfaced a moment later right beside the boat. “You okay, Lala?” he said.

  Tala barely kept herself collected. She saw Dimangan so rarely, even if he was always there in her head. His face had been twisted into something harsh and ugly by their shadepact, with a heavy jaw and sloped forehead. But thankfully, her moment of weakness had left his eyes intact. They had a way of unlocking a lot of different feelings in her, and she wasn’t used to experiencing them without him hanging out in the back of her mind anymore. “No,” she said, voice shaking as she fought to control her pain. With each stab of agony, she felt his own as if it were an echo: like her own, but huger and all-encompassing. “But I’m safe now, thanks to you, Mang.”

  She leaned down and slipped an arm around his massive neck and shoulders, carefully navigating the slick spines of bone there. She’d learned the hard way that it was difficult to hug him normally anymore.

  When she glanced up at Jimuro, though, she saw the prince wearing an expression of pure shock, but it was bleeding over into horror. He jerked as far away from Dimangan as he could, then shrank into that corner. “What the hell is that thing?”

  At last, Dimangan seemed to notice Tala wasn’t alone in the boat. His brow furrowed dangerously. “Tomodanese,” he growled, his voice as soft as thunder. A fresh knife of pain carved through the back of Tala’s head. “Lala, who is this steelhound?”

  Any other day of her life, she would’ve shared the fullness of his ire, and the homicidal spark that flickered just below it. For Dimangan, she would always be ready to pick one more fight, kill one more steelhound, win one more war.

  But that wasn’t an option now. Couldn’t be an option now. The only option she had left was the mission, and that meant explaining some things.

  “Mang,” she said, gesturing to the prince, “this is Iron Prince Jimuro, heir to the throne of Tomoda.” And then she turned to Jimuro and ignored the stabbing between her temples as she said, “Prince Jimuro, this is Dimangan.” She hesitated one last time, then finally gave the words voice: “He’s my brother.”

  Both Jimuro and Dimangan erupted with questions and outrage, but Tala couldn’t answer any of it. Her head was too fuzzy, her mind too distant. Fatigue had turned her muscles to congee. The pain in her head was sharp and persistent, but the poison was carrying her far, far away from it…

  There was a blackness darker than the night that surrounded them, and before she could stop it, it swallowed her whole.

  The taste of last night’s beer was stale in the back of Lee’s throat as she stumbled her way onto the topmost deck of the Wave Falcon. She’d never been fond of the stuff on land; it didn’t travel nearly as well as whiskey, and Lee never stayed put for long. But the Wave Falcon had a large shipment in its hold, part of Shang’s long-term strategy to assert control over Tomoda by flooding the island’s markets with every commodity it could before Dahal did the same thing. And apparently Lee’s new Li-Quan credentials—Xiulan had made her sign a fancy piece of paper and everything—allowed her to commandeer whatever she liked in the pursuit of justice. So Lee figured, what was the point of being a cop if she didn’t enjoy the perks?

  When Xiulan had first laid out what being her partner meant, Lee had kept cool. But inside, she’d been awed by the possibility it represented. Her whole life, she’d never had the freedom to just have what she wanted. Whenever a woman like her felt desire, there’d always been a degree of danger.

  In the gray light of morning, however, she was belatedly beginning to appreciate the restraint that danger bred.

  Her boots clanked on the ship’s steel deck, and the noise only made her head pound worse. Despite her vagrant nature, she liked to be about as put-together as a woman of her station could be. But today her clothes hung sloppily off her frame. Her short hair was matted and messy. She was lucky she hadn’t had a chance to get her hands on some makeup before she’d left; on this harsh morning, she was sure smeared makeup would’ve made her look as dead as she felt.

  Well, this is what she gets for partnering with a gutter dog, she thought as she approached the prow of the ship.

  Her benefactor was already standing there, arms clasped behind her back. She’d replaced her billowy whi
te trousers with a smartly tailored suit in the same color. Her long, pale coat, however, remained. There was nothing to see but the gray mist, but Xiulan stared out at it as if it were a particularly interesting painting. The sea breeze made the edges of her coat ripple impressively, and Lee wondered if that was precisely why Xiulan was standing there.

  As Lee approached, Xiulan casually combed her hair back down over her left eye with her fingers. By the time Lee fell into step beside her, she was a cyclops again. “You had a rough night,” the princess said jovially.

  “I had a fucking great night,” Lee muttered. “I’m having a rough morning. Key difference there.”

  Xiulan’s smile was small but potent, like a drop of chili oil in a bowl of broth. “I was worried you’d miss your first view of Tomoda itself.” She didn’t look even slightly worried, but Lee figured it didn’t bear mentioning.

  “Kohoyama, huh?” Lee said, stifling a yeast-flavored yawn. She knew she said the word clumsily. Growing up, she’d managed to duck out of imperial schooling. The Tomodanese leaned heavily on compulsory education to remake the countries they conquered, but even they didn’t care if some Jeongsonese girl fell through the cracks. It had made her feel a good deal freer at the time, but it had left her with a limited grasp of how to speak their growling, staccato excuse for a language. Reading it had been a necessity, since their alphabet had been on every sign in the country. But she’d been much better at evading the interest of authorities when they thought she was just some dumb Shang who couldn’t understand them.

  “That’s right,” said Xiulan. “In addition to its status as a bustling port, it was a pleasure city for the royal family and their favored companions, where they would vacation in the summers. And the winters. And for the nine major festivals. And…”

  “You and yours ever have a place like that?” Lee said. She knew it was impudent—and imprudent—to interrupt a member of the royal family, but she was too hung over to be pudent or prudent. “You hear the rumors and all, but I’ve never gotten within spitting distance of a palace.”

  Xiulan’s smile faltered. “Once, we had many,” she said. “One in each of the thirty-three lands of Shang dominion. Now the only one that remains intact is the Palace of Glass. Do you know it?”

  Lee shook her head.

  “That’s not surprising,” said Xiulan. “Growing up, we did what we could to avoid publicizing our location to the enemy. If Tomoda had managed to find and eliminate the Shang family, it would’ve been the end of our kingdom’s future.”

  Lee sighed indulgently. Every so often on their short voyage, Xiulan would get into this kind of lofty talk about her family’s place in the natural order of things. It was tiresome, but Lee hadn’t gotten quite bold enough to call her on it just yet. Still, she knew herself well enough to know it was probably just a matter of time. “So that’s how you spent the war, was it?” Lee said. “Sitting pretty up in a palace, an army of maids with big tits at your beck and call?”

  “It was an army of soldiers,” Xiulan said evenly, “and their bustlines varied greatly. We took the Palace of Glass, least of our retreats, and turned it into the seed from which the Peony Revolution would eventually sprout. Someday, though, I would like to go back and enjoy the palace in the manner it was meant to be experienced.” Suddenly her manner became brisk. “But I have a lot of work to do until that day comes. And I sincerely doubt Ruomei would give me much time to relax, if she were to be the one to ascend and take the throne.”

  It was Lee’s turn to sour, and not just from the hangover. The past four days, Xiulan had given her a pretty good idea of what the reign of Shang Ruomei might look like. If Xiulan was to be believed—and honestly, Lee wasn’t totally sure that was the case just yet—then Ruomei had little desire besides turning Shang into the new Tomoda, when its people had only just caught their breath from fighting the last war. Lee honestly didn’t give that many shits about the global order, since it looked bad for her people either way. But lean times had a funny way of being leaner for her people than most.

  “What are you hoping to find here, then?” Lee said. “You need me to point out the guy once we find him, but it seems like you’re the one who’s got all the leads. Not that I’m complaining about getting a free pass out of irons, but why let me roam? What d’you need me for?”

  Thoughtfully, Xiulan removed her pipe from her coat and lit it. “Mine was a privileged upbringing,” she said eventually. “I can expertly navigate the intricacies of palace intrigue, I’m well versed in all the great classics of Shang’s noble culture, and I can paint a fine landscape if I have a free afternoon. The field in which I’m most lacking is perspective: a contrast with my own views, held by a mind I consider to possess sufficient keenness.” When she saw Lee frowning at her, she said, “To phrase things in another way: How did you find Lefty? Shang is a massive country, and he very well could’ve been anywhere. How did you locate him?”

  Lee closed her eyes and pictured him. Lefty. There’d been a mistake, if ever she’d met one. But he’d been a handsome mistake. And, Lee thought as his face morphed into someone slighter and younger, with a bang over one eye, she’d always had a weakness for those.

  The job had been simple enough: Find a good, upstanding citizen and present themselves to him as landowners looking to reward him for his patriotism during the war. They’d found it in Hong Wei, a dentist who was, by all accounts, the richest man in his small town. She and Lefty had introduced themselves to Hong as siblings who’d inherited a rice farm but needed a silent partner so they could grow the operation even more. They’d toured him through an abandoned farm, the whole time talking up the quality of the soil and the minerals in the water as proof that the place was practically a secret opal mine.

  Lee was a born gutter dog who hadn’t known a damn thing about farming, but apparently her performance had been convincing enough. Hong Wei had signed over twelve hundred yuan to them in exchange for a generous 15 percent stake in their burgeoning enterprise. She and Lefty didn’t mind giving up such a large stake for so little, they’d assured him, because they were just that confident in their little farm’s future. The next day, she’d woken up to find her bed empty, the money gone, and the local cops closing in. All because she’d slacked on her one rule, the only law she ever respected.

  Leave them before they leave you.

  The whole time she’d been trailing Lefty, she’d promised herself that she’d kill him for this. With every whisper that brought her closer to him, she’d treated herself to a new fantasy about how she’d actually do it. And when that trail finally led her to Jungshao, she was just about ready to indulge in all of them at once. But what she’d found instead…

  The memories of the organ mill welled up in her brain, and vomit welled up in her throat. She threw herself at the nearest railing, leaned over the side, and spewed everything from last night into the dark waves below.

  A full minute later, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve, stood up, and answered in a much clearer voice.

  “Mostly, I just paid attention,” she said. “I knew what kinds of places he liked, and I knew what he liked to do when he was scared. That was all it took to find him, really. People can do a lot of things, Inspector. But if you’re really paying attention, they can never surprise you.”

  Xiulan took a thoughtful puff of her pipe in silence. The smoke of her breath had completely disappeared into the mist before she said, “The palace of Kohoyama is where the royal family was habitually at its most comfortable and relaxed. There, I expect they were the most…themselves, if that makes sense. I hope between my keen deductive mind and your skills of observation, we’ll be able to gain some insight into where the prince might hide himself on his way down to Hagane.”

  “ ‘Down’?” said Lee. “Why wouldn’t they sail directly to Hagane? Quickest path puts him in danger for the shortest amount of time.”

  �
�And it’ll be the most watched route by far,” Xiulan said, her tone gently chiding. “I thought you were supposed to be a keen judge of character, Inspector Lee.”

  Lee shrugged it off, though her ears burned a little at their tips. “You said that, not me. So you think they’ll land and head south overland.”

  “With preplanned, secure stops along the way. And at one of those stops,” Xiulan said gleefully, “you and I will lie in wait.”

  Lee grunted while her ears burned hotter. She was annoyed with herself. She wasn’t supposed to give two shits what the royals thought. Why was her ego smarting so much? “And between now and then,” she said, “we’re going to find me a shade.”

  Xiulan merely nodded, and Lee was struck by how much regality the other woman could inject into such a small gesture. They both stood there for a moment, enjoying the spray on their faces as Xiulan hummed something soft and tuneless.

  Pleasant as that moment was, though, Lee eventually felt like she should say something. “You’re a princess,” she said, tapping her fingers on the cold metal railing. “You should’ve pacted with a white crane, like the rest of your family.”

  Xiulan just stood there and smoked.

  “Why’d you go and pact with a rat?”

  Reflexively, Xiulan frowned. She segued the expression smoothly into a sly grin, but not before Lee noticed the frown.

  “For one thing, they’re incredibly intelligent creatures, rats,” Xiulan said. “They’re reliable in a fight. They excel in darkness, they can swim in even the rankest water, and they can climb nearly anything. My sister Ruomei told me they were the scum of the animal kingdom, but I suppose rats are my kind of scum: fearless and inventive.” A playful light danced in Xiulan’s one visible eye. “Mostly, though, I just think they’re cute.”