by Paul Krueger
Then he remembered how far away from that life he still was. And his eyes lingered darkly on the barbarians that had been tasked with bringing him there safely.
Wordlessly, the slave guided their boat into the shallows until the prow ground up against the shore. Jimuro leapt from the boat, the water plastering his kimono’s folds against his body. He shivered in the morning chill, his breath visible. But sure enough, beneath the noise of the lapping tide, he could hear Tomoda’s unofficial national anthem, the song of the cicada.
He turned around to haul the sergeant out of the boat, only to be confronted with the sight of a musclebound giant nearly four meters tall already holding her in its arms. He gaped up at it.
The slave glared balefully back down. “Out of my way,” it rumbled, not giving Jimuro the courtesy of speaking in Tomodanese.
Jimuro wanted to get out of its way, but he found himself rooted on the spot. Though there was little light, Dimangan still managed to cast a shadow over him. Jimuro’s whole body felt rigid, as if it were merely a metal vessel into which his spirit had been poured.
Dimangan rolled its eyes, then moved faster than any creature had a right to. It lunged forward, its bone spurs flashing, and then its head was a centimeter from Jimuro’s face in less time than it took for the Iron Prince to blink. Jimuro yelped in surprise and fell back onto his bottom, sitting wrist-deep in the shallows and scrambling to get away.
It glared down at him. “If I killed you now, nobody would know. You’d become one of history’s unsolved mysteries. Once Tomoda was ground down to dust, you’d become nothing. You would deserve it.” It took a slow, ponderous step toward Jimuro and added, “And for me, it would be so easy.”
That much was true. The only leverage Jimuro had was the one bullet in his borrowed gun. Against Dimangan, it would do less than nothing. But if Jimuro used it to kill Sergeant Tala, it would sever the magical connection keeping them together. So the question was: If it came down to it, could he get off a shot before the monster ended him?
His eyes fell on the unconscious sergeant bundled in her slave’s arms, and the question of could suddenly took on a completely different tone in his head.
Dimangan glared down at him a moment longer. It seemed as though it were truly considering the idea. Its muscles bunched and its sharp spurs of bone glinted. Jimuro’s prodigious imagination treated him to a dozen vivid visions of what they could do to his own fragile body.
Dimangan’s fist clenched tighter. In its contours, Jimuro saw the death he thought he’d cheated.
Suddenly Dimangan’s entire form flickered, as if it were a movie on a screen and a bad frame had just run through the projector. It was only for a second, if that long, but it was enough.
The sergeant fell into the shallows right in front of him just as Dimangan reappeared. It looked down at its own empty hands in confusion, then saw its sister lying facedown in the water. “What did you do?” it roared, loping forward as Jimuro hastily flipped Tala onto her back.
“Nothing!” Jimuro cried. “Nothing at all!” He pointed to the wound in Sergeant Tala’s shoulder. “It was that spider-shade. The one that bit her. Your sister’s very strong, but she’s been fighting its venom for hours with no food or water. Even she has her limits.” When Dimangan looked unconvinced, he snapped: “If I could do something to hurt you, don’t you think I’d have done it before now?”
That seemed to pierce the creature’s doubts like a bullet through bone. When it moved again, it was only to pick its sister back up. “On your way, steelhound,” it growled in a voice that made every hair on Jimuro’s body stand up. “It’s a long walk to Hagane. You’d better get started.”
Jimuro gaped. “But you’re—your sister was going to—”
Dimangan didn’t seem to care what its sister was going to do. It’d stalked out of the surf at last, onto dry land. With its arms full, it could only rely on its smaller legs, which made it move clumsily. But even so, it showed no signs of stopping.
“Wait!” Jimuro called before he could stop himself. Even after three years of imprisonment, he was still a prince born, and used to commanding instant obedience with a word. So he was surprised when the slave didn’t even hesitate; it just kept walking, carrying its sister and trailing a single set of massive footprints in the sand.
Though she was months dead, in that moment Jimuro heard Steel Lord Yoshiko’s voice in his ear, as clearly as if she were right next to him. Leave them to die.
But they saved me, he protested.
She was ordered to save you, rang the voice of the departed Steel Lord. If it were her choice, she would have let you die. You are the Iron Prince. You are in your own country. The spirits will preserve you. You have no use for savages and slaves.
She raised some excellent points, he thought as he glared at the retreating forms of the monster and what was left of her brother. What was to stop him from just marching into the nearest town, identifying himself, and finally being shown the respect he was due?
But Sergeant Tala’s job isn’t to respect you, another voice countered. If the memory of his mother’s voice was steel-hard, his sister’s was soft and bright as copper. It’s to keep you alive. He could almost see the mischievous curl of her lips as she added, How has she done so far?
He murmured a hurried apology to his mother, and to all his other ancestors watching him. And then he ran to catch up with the Sanbunas.
He had to jog to keep up with Dimangan’s long strides. “Wait,” he said again.
Dimangan’s expression didn’t change. Its eyes didn’t so much as flicker Jimuro’s way. But its next steps were undeniably longer. Rapidly, it was leaving Jimuro behind again.
Jimuro groaned, then broke into a full-on run. “I, Jimuro, Iron Prince of Tomoda and heir to the Steel Throne, divine vessel of the spirits and beating heart of Tomoda’s people, command you to halt!”
Dimangan whirled around, and Jimuro nearly fell onto his face trying to stop in time. “I don’t have time for you,” the creature snarled.
Jimuro did his best to channel his mother. In his mind, she was still the true Steel Lord; he was just a cheap tin replica. But he wouldn’t let this slave see that dullness. He had to be true steel, too.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he said.
Dimangan glowered at him. “Where do you think? Lala needs me.”
Despite his deep-seated fear of this irrational, angry creature, a part of Jimuro’s mind registered its use of a nickname. Had it been a family name of the sergeant’s? It was so hard to keep track of Sanbuna naming conventions. “Sergeant Tala needs medical help,” he said. “Can you provide it to her?”
“You don’t know what I can do,” Dimangan said, starting to turn again.
“I know your form’s only maintaining because on some subconscious level, your sister’s willing you to remain while she fights for her life. But you’ve already seen her start to falter.”
“She’s stronger than any poison,” Dimangan said, though there was the tiniest tinge of doubt hiding somewhere in its tone.
“What if she’s not?” Jimuro said. “And if she’s still not awake by the time her willpower gives out for good, what happens to her once you disappear?”
Dimangan’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Where would you take her?”
Jimuro tried not to show his relief that they’d entered into the negotiation phase. “In addition to our many estates and palaces, my family maintained a separate network of discreet safe houses around the country,” he said. “Our spies would use them, as would members of the family who just needed to get away for a while.”
“Slaughtering people and enslaving the survivors? That’s gotta take a lot out of someone.”
Jimuro bristled. Immediately a dozen replies leapt to his lips. That Sanbuna factory workers and manual laborers were paid wages for the work
they did for the state. That Tomoda had dragged a screaming, ungrateful Sanbu into the future, and had asked for relatively little in return for its generosity. That the one person who shouldn’t be lecturing him about slavery was a willing slave.
His eyes fell to Dimangan’s curled fist, larger than Jimuro’s own head. As he eyed that powerful arm and those jutting plates of bone, a detailed vision of his future painted itself before the Iron Prince’s very eyes.
It was mostly in shades of red.
So instead of all those other replies, he simply said, “General Erega and I have a plan, and the next part involves heading to this safe house. Now, think: Your sister agreed to carry out this plan. With her dying breath, if necessary. You…live…in her head. Can you honestly tell me she’d want you to walk away from that for her?”
He felt a pang of guilt as the argument dropped from his lips. Now that he’d pointed it out, there was no way the slave would be able to walk away. Its will was subservient to its sister’s, no matter how convincing an illusion of autonomy she’d crafted for it.
Sure enough, Dimangan eventually nodded: just the once, but the once was all Jimuro needed. “How far?”
“A bit,” Jimuro admitted. He didn’t remember the exact distance. He hadn’t been up to this safe house since he was eight years old.
Dimangan grunted, and Jimuro understood: Lead the way.
* * *
—
It took them the better part of an hour to make the march inland. As with the voyage, he and Dimangan passed it in silence, while Tala barely stirred as she bounced in her brother’s arms.
Jimuro used the silence to address the swirl of questions rampaging through his head. Who was that man who’d single-handedly sunk the Marlin and slaughtered every soul aboard? He didn’t seem to be affiliated with any one nation, so what had Jimuro done to earn his enmity?
And, he thought as he narrowed his eyes at the sergeant, how had Tala come to be like him?
Her expression was pained, her eyes twitching beneath their lids. Though Dimangan’s form had held strong since the walk began, it was only a matter of time before she faltered again. But all Jimuro could think of was that in all of known history, there were only two individuals who’d been able to enslave more than one spirit. The first was a madman who’d been devoured by the sea last night.
And the second was right there in front of him.
Despite everything Jimuro had to consider, with every step they took toward their destination, excitement grew in his chest. He savored the familiar taste of the air, the springy grass beneath his feet. As the landscape transitioned from shore to forest, the cicadas’ trilling only grew in intensity.
He closed his eyes as he walked and felt the spirits flow through him. They were everywhere: in the rocks, in the birds above, in the individual blades of grass and in the wind that swayed them. Wherever he went in the world, the spirits there would sing to him. But they never sang so sweetly as they did in Tomoda.
I’m home at last, he thought. Soon, my work can begin.
For half a heartbeat, his step faltered.
They crested a hill, and there it was: a small cabin in the middle of a grove of fir trees. It had a gray stone foundation, dark wooden walls, and a thickly thatched roof, steep enough to shrug off the northern snows. The small windows he remembered had a bit of accumulated dust, but they were intact. The door was untouched, too, and it slid open with a simple tap of its rusty iron handle.
The inside was as he remembered it. There were only two rooms, and one of those was the bathroom. Besides the black iron stove in the kitchen area, there was no metal to be found—just wood and stone. It didn’t look at all like the sort of place the royal family would have ever deigned to visit.
All things considered, Jimuro couldn’t have been happier to be there.
He hadn’t realized until just now how much he’d missed being inside a structure of Tomodanese design, furnished in the Tomodanese way. Instead of swinging doors: sensible sliding ones, to save space. Instead of chairs: straw mats and cushions on the floor, so one would never be too far from the earth. Instead of clutter: sparseness, to ensure that the mind was similarly clear. He bowed and muttered a quick prayer of gratitude to the spirit of the house before entering.
It took Dimangan a full minute to carefully squeeze itself through the doorway, limb by limb. When it finally managed its way in, it had to hunch over like an ape just to fit, and even then its huge bald scalp threatened to graze the ceiling. It scowled at the cramped environs. “This is your fancy safe house?” Indoors, its deep voice felt resonant enough to rattle Jimuro’s bones.
“I’m sure it’s luxury compared with whatever squalor you and your sister lived in as jungle-runners,” he sniffed, adjusting his glasses. He tapped the cold stove, and its little door popped open to reveal that it had no fuel stocked. He sighed, then pressed a hand to it and poured his spirit into the iron’s emptiness.
The steel is empty, he recited to himself. The steel is bone, and you are blood.
In moments, it began to feel warm to his touch, though it would take a while to heat up properly.
He gestured to a straw mat rolled up in the corner. “Lay her down on that pallet.”
Irritably, Dimangan nudged the mat flat with its giant foot. Jimuro frowned to himself. From his observation during the sergeant’s shifts guarding him, her bird-slave had a similarly bad temper. Was this characteristic of all slaves, or was Sergeant Tala just that callous a master?
He shifted his grip up on the iron stove as it got hotter. He was channeling his spirit into the round belly of the device, and that was where most of the heat flowed, but magic couldn’t circumvent the laws of thermodynamics and convection. In another minute or so it would be entirely too hot for him to hold, but by then it would have enough built-up residual heat to last a few hours.
The slave knelt by its sister’s side, stroking her hair with a tenderness that took Jimuro aback. But then its image flickered again. When it popped back into existence, its entire body shook with frustration for a moment. Not tearing its gaze away from its sister, it asked: “What now?”
“What do you mean, ‘what now’?”
With ponderous, dangerous slowness, the slave turned to regard Jimuro. “You brought us to this rathole,” it said, gesturing to a cabin that Jimuro was only just realizing would not withstand a sufficiently angry Dimangan. “What was the next part of your plan?”
“Bringing you here was the plan,” Jimuro said, determined not to show this creature fear. “Somewhere safe and warm,” he added, raising his voice to be heard over Dimangan’s vocal annoyance, “where we can stabilize her condition. The rest of it will come to me. I just need time to think.”
Dimangan growled, then sat down heavily enough to make the whole house shake. “How can you think in a place like this?”
This wretched, sullen creature didn’t deserve the gift of a prince’s honesty. But when Jimuro opened his mouth, it was to give that gift just the same.
* * *
—
The first time Jimuro had laid his eyes on the Kinzokita estate, he was in the passenger seat of a car. His family had been wintering at the palace at Kohoyama, a full day’s drive south and to the west. Lord Kurihara was back from the front in Shang, and for his valor had been rewarded with a stay at the palace as the royal family’s honored guest. It’d been fun for Jimuro’s parents, who were quite close with Lord Daisuke and Lady Kaguya. It’d been fun for Fumiko, who loved to tease her friend Kurihara Keiko about the crush Keiko supposedly harbored on him. But Jimuro had mostly stayed in his room, studiously drawing the snowfall outside while his friend Kohaku warmed her paws near the heater.
He’d been asleep in his bed, Kohaku curled up at his feet, when he’d been shaken awake. He’d expected it to be a servant, getting him up for the day, or maybe Fumiko,
wanting to sneak out and explore the grounds at night. But when he’d opened his eyes, he’d found himself staring into the face of the reigning Steel Lord, divine vessel of the spirits, beating heart of the Tomodanese people, and the most powerful woman in the world.
But saying all that got cumbersome, so he’d given her a nickname.
“Mother?” he’d said. Even though he knew light and sound had no bearing on each other, his voice had sounded smaller in the dark, somehow.
Not hers, though. “Get dressed,” she’d said. Her voice was customarily hard, but the thumb she ran along his cheekbone was gentle. “We’re going somewhere.” She’d risen to her full height and swept out of the room without another word. She knew she didn’t need it. Jimuro would follow and obey.
Despite Captain Sakura’s agitated insistence, the Steel Lord refused the company of even a single member of her royal guard, the Kobaruto. Rather than the sleek, futuristic car that was the chosen transport of the royal family, she’d commandeered an unremarkable staff car. “I miss being my own driver,” she’d said as they pulled away. The whole car hummed as she infused its metal with her spirit and willed it to go. “When I was Iron Princess, I’d take one of these out and drive it for kilometers before I turned around.”
Jimuro’s eyes, still heavy with sleep, had gone wide at the thought of his mother as a joyriding princess. “Where are we turning around?”
“A secret place,” she’d said.
His little eyes had grown even wider. “A secret place?”
For just a moment, his mother had shown him the barest hint of a grin, brief as sun flashing off steel. “Yes,” she’d said softly. “And my favorite one in the whole world.”
When they’d finally arrived after a full day of driving, Jimuro had been tired and irritable. His mother had entered eagerly, removing her rings and necklace as soon as she crossed the threshold. She stowed them amid other jewelry in a box hidden beneath a front-hall floorboard before changing into plain clothes. But Jimuro had failed to see the charm of this nondescript cottage in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by snow-laden trees. The night did little to dispel that first impression; he’d spent it shivering next to a fire his mother had built herself. In the morning, he’d had to wait while she painstakingly prepared them rice, soup, and natto herself. And once they’d finally, finally eaten, she’d told him to get his coat on so he could go out and chop wood.
