Steel Crow Saga

by Paul Krueger

  She noticed a smudge in the corner, which had been turned somewhat convincingly into a cherry tree. “It’s not printed on,” she muttered. “Guess he must’ve drawn it.” She had to admit, the Iron Prince wasn’t bad. She guessed if one was going to lead a life of idle leisure, drawing was as good a way as any to fill the time.

  Something clicked in her head. She glanced up at the wall, where there hung a painting of a ship sailing against the sun. She studied the brushstrokes on it for a moment before saying, “He painted that.”

  Xiulan turned to examine the painting. “What makes you say that?”

  Lee held up the sketchbook, then flipped through its other pages. Sure enough, each of them had a different drawing or painting on it. Sometimes they were people, sometimes they were landscapes, and sometimes they were the dog with the muddy feet. The style evolved here and there, as the prince played around with new techniques, but all the art had undeniably been wrought by the same hand.

  Xiulan glanced from the painting to the sketchbook, then back to the painting. “Most interesting,” she said politely. “But I’m reluctant to believe that our quarry would have embedded the geographic coordinates of a secret royal family hideout in his personal doodles.”

  Lee shrugged, a little stung. “All right, then.” She tossed the sketchbook onto the bed with the others.

  Xiulan seemed to realize she’d misstepped, because she sighed and put down the book in her hands. “You have my sincerest apologies for my dismissiveness,” she said. “I’m merely frustrated at the lack of workable evidence here. I shouldn’t have directed that frustration toward you.”

  Lee grunted. “That’s a long walk to ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

  “Our beautiful language has gifted us with such a multitude of words,” Xiulan said. “What better way to glorify them than with their use?” But she sighed. “I don’t believe this line of investigation will bear the fruit I’d hoped. We should go.”

  As they headed downstairs to begin their trek back, Xiulan was uncharacteristically silent. She’d practically bounded up the steps earlier, but now she trudged down them.

  Lee let it pass for a flight or two, but eventually the other woman’s disappointment got to a point where it became intrusively palpable. She had to say something. “What, did you think we were going to find some magic compass with THIS WAY TO THE PRINCE written on it?”

  Xiulan sighed ruefully. “I’m not sure what I expected to find here, Lee,” she said. “I thought being in his space, where he was at his most comfortable and genuine, I’d be able to step into the shoes of the Iron Prince himself and deduce what his next move would be. Wishful thinking, I know.”

  Lee barked with laughter. “What? A neat, tidy mystery to solve, like a Bai Junjie novel?”

  Xiulan glanced back over her shoulder, though it was with the eye covered by her loose bang. “Reading those books as a child is what made me want to become a detective,” she said simply.

  Lee put up her hands: Hey, it’s all good with me.

  Xiulan seemed satisfied with this. “You’re familiar with the canon of Bai Junjie?”

  “Never read them, exactly,” Lee said. “But we had a radio, and they’d do these plays based on the books, so mom would let us listen to them during dinner. They had some other show on after, about a woman who flies around in this machine of hers and punches Tomodanese soldiers a lot. We’d always beg mom to let us stay up past bedtime to listen to it.”

  “I take it such negotiating tactics were unsuccessful.”

  Lee snorted. “Shang or Jeongsonese, queen or beggar, a mom’s a mom.”

  “Yours was a beggar, I imagine?” Xiulan said.

  Lee bristled at Xiulan jumping so quickly to that conclusion, but stopped herself from saying anything. She supposed there’d been a reason she’d used that word herself.

  “Sometimes the begging was with a hat while she sang on the street,” Lee said. “Sometimes it was cleaning houses and hoping she’d actually get paid what they promised her. I didn’t settle on an illustrious career of petty thieving because I was a bored rich girl.”

  Xiulan hesitated on the stairs—only for half a heartbeat, but long enough for Lee to notice.

  “What we’ve done to the children of Jeongson is unconscionable,” Xiulan said carefully. “I want you to know that I never—I’ve always believed—”

  Lee sighed. “Save it.”

  Xiulan whirled around. “No,” she said, and Lee was taken aback by the earnestness shining in her eye. She was already young, but it made her look even younger. “I need you to know I’m not like the others, Lee.”

  “Right, so now I know,” Lee said simply. “You feel better yet?”

  Xiulan frowned. “I’m trying to say I want to help you. Is this how you treat all your allies?”

  “I’m just saying I’ve heard it before,” Lee said with a shrug. “Normally from shopkeeps as they handed me stale bao. They’d give me a whole spiel, then walk away whistling and skipping because they’d done their good deed for the day. They acted like it was gonna make the bao taste better, when really I just wanted some gochujang.”

  Hurt glinted in Xiulan’s eye, but Lee didn’t show her a shred of sympathy. Her partner was a princess. She didn’t need a backpat, least of all from Lee.

  They climbed down the rest of the way in silence.

  It wasn’t until they reached the ground floor again that Xiulan spoke. “Commandeering a vehicle from the Dahali shouldn’t be too difficult,” she said bracingly. “But before that, I could stand to eat.”

  Lee’s own poor gut cried out for something oozing with grease and salt. “Speaking my language, Princess.”

  “I’ve been given to understand Kohoyama is host to some of Tomoda’s finest establishments. Do you enjoy soba?”

  “What’s the point?” Lee said ruefully. “These steelhounds don’t eat meat. If you ask me, a meal’s not a meal unless something had to die for it.”

  They crossed the threshold into the afternoon sun. “You would be surprised what culinary miracles can be worked in the absence of meat,” Xiulan said. “I happen to be in possession of an excellent recipe for mapo tofu…”

  She trailed off mid-sentence.

  Walking straight into a line of brandished Dahali rifles had that effect on people.

  Lee regarded the row of gleaming gun barrels, and the brown-jacketed soldiers holding them. They were all men with long black beards. Mixed in with them were uniformed women with flowing dark hair who bore no weapons at all. But they didn’t appear to need them; their hands all crackled with white auras of magical energy.

  Lee sighed, then regarded the triumphant Chetan Parkash, who stood at their head. “Were you out here the whole time?”

  “Chetan Parkash saw no harm in letting you wander while waiting for confirmation of your identities,” Parkash said mildly.

  Xiulan paled, then recomposed herself. “I understand,” she said. “We asked too much of you, proud merchants that you are, without paying what was due you. Allow me to retrieve my billfold and—”

  “You will do no such thing,” Parkash said, and Xiulan froze halfway through reaching into her coat. Reluctantly, the princess put her hand down at her side.

  That seemed to satisfy Parkash. “Chetan Parkash apologizes for the imposition on whatever plans you had,” he said. “But nonetheless, this one wishes for you to know that it’s an honor to meet you, Your Majesty.” He bowed deeply.

  Xiulan paled further. Lee, however, was feeling fairly bold. “If she is who you say she is,” she said, pointing to the shouldered rifles, “you wouldn’t dare fire those things. The Crane Emperor would have each of your nuts in its own gold-plated vise.”

  “That’s true,” Parkash said. “This one admits, they were largely for show.”

  Lee sighed, then nodded to the nearest
woman in his contingent. “But the glow-hands aren’t for show, are they?”

  There was genuine regret in Parkash’s smile. “This one is afraid not.”

  “Ko—” Xiulan began, but a white bolt of energy hit her squarely in the chest. Her eye rolled back in her head, her entire body convulsed, and then she crumpled to the ground like a puppet with cut strings.

  Lee wasn’t the type to shout in horror or anger when things went tits-up for one of her partners. She was the type to make a break for it, then thank the dogs later that she’d been quick on her feet.

  But at the sight of Xiulan falling, fury stirred in her chest. A roar of outrage began to grow in her throat. It would have crescendoed into something terrible, she knew, but it was cut short when another white bolt struck her in the gut and folded her in half.

  There was pain. The dogs take her, there was pain rippling across every inch of her body.

  But, Lee Yeon-Ji thought as she slipped her way out of the world, it still hurt less than her hangover.

  Even through the ringing of her ears, she could hear his screams.

  Moments before, they’d been a family at their table, eating dinner. Ama had put a massive banana leaf on the table, then piled it high with the rice and pork he’d cooked for them. The pork had been special, illegally obtained at an underground market. And at Ina’s nod, they’d all reached for it the proper Sanbuna way: with their bare hands.

  She was a small girl of ten, eagerly shoveling food into her mouth with tiny hands. Ina chided her for tempting fate and making herself sick. Ama chided her for not properly enjoying the food he’d spent so long on. Mang pounded the table excitedly, cheering that she was on track to break her old record.

  When she swallowed a mouthful, she tried to steer the subject toward an assassination attempt by the rebels she and Mang had witnessed in the market that day. Rumors all over Lisan City had it that the Iron Prince himself had been there, but she was proud to say she had better than rumors; she’d seen the boy with her own eyes.

  But her excitement was met with stony worry from her parents, and Mang shot her a warning look not to prod the subject further.

  She scowled into her rice. They were living in exciting times. Revolution was in the air. Even a child like Tala could smell it, not to mention the more tempting scent of freedom that wafted in its wake. She knew she’d grouse to Mang about it later, but for now she remained fixated on the question: Why was the rest of her family so intent on ignoring what was inescapably obvious to her?

  And then the world was fire and thunder.

  She didn’t remember the bomb hitting, just waking up covered in soot and blood. She had ash in her mouth, ringing in her ears, and tears in her eyes, even though she didn’t totally understand what had just happened. But even for one so young as her, it took only moments to put the pieces together.

  Her family’s modest home was in ruins, blasted down to its concrete walls. Nothing glass or wood was whole.

  Neither was anything of flesh and blood.

  In the ruins of their dining room, it wasn’t hard for Tala to identify her parents. Their skin had been blackened with flame, their bones shredded by shrapnel. But she couldn’t freeze up at the sight. Not when the air was thick with Dimangan’s screams.

  He looked as if he’d nearly been cut in two by the blast. His shiny scalp had been burned into an angry red mess of seared flesh. His own guts were spread all around him, sauced in blood. He tried to move himself, but it was no use. Nothing pinned him in place, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Everything Tala had eaten climbed back to her throat and hovered there, ready. Any one thing she saw would’ve been enough to shut her down completely. But all at once, she didn’t even have room to feel things. She had been spared. The only one of her family left alive.

  Except for Dimangan.

  She looked down at her shaking, bloodstained hands. She had so many questions. So many fears. But right now, what she really had were things to do.

  She laid her hands on Mang’s twitching, ruined body, and he didn’t flinch back from her touch. His eyes met hers, and they were wide with horror and agony.

  “Sanbuna lore has countless monsters,” he had told her once. “But the worst of them wears a human face.”

  In that moment, splintersoul legends flashed through her head: Of Tikat, who tried to drown the world in night by pacting herself with the sun. Of Hui the Maw, whose shades devoured whole cities until the Tiger Emperor’s armies finally ended him. One after another they came to her, until she had a dozen splintersoul stories floating around her in a cloud.

  And then her mind began to pen a thirteenth.

  She had to speak up to hear her own voice through the ringing in her ears. Tears continued to flow from the corners of her eyes, but she knew her jaw was set, her sight steely and clear.

  “Tell me what to do.”

  Dimangan looked up at her, uncomprehending for a moment.

  Then, dawning horror. He shook his head, as far as it would go.

  Tala tightened her grip. She was set on this path now, and that determination was the only thing keeping back the fires of her grief. In a stroke, Mang had become the only person she had left in the world, and she couldn’t lose him. “Please,” she said.

  Mang stared a long while. Her pulse quickened. Had he died just the same? Had she waited too long?

  But then at last, her brother’s mangled lips parted. He began to whisper instructions.

  As she closed her eyes and concentrated, something changed about the tears carving through the grime on her cheeks. She was only a girl of ten, but already she recognized them. They were the tears she cried when she was about to do something unforgivable.

  She didn’t need to hear the question that he was going to ask of her when they met in the center of the bridge that spanned from soul to soul.

  She already knew what her answer would be.

  * * *

  —

  A rumble broke through her dream. “Lala.”

  Tala’s eyes snapped open. When her sight returned, the throbbing all up and down her body came with it. She wasn’t sure what kind of poison that spider-shade had been packing, but even a small dose had been potent enough to almost completely disable her. She couldn’t feel her hands and toes anymore, could barely feel the limbs to which they were attached. And yet despite that, the special pain she felt only with Mang remained, clear and sharp as the trumpet at reveille.

  She tried to breathe deep, but her lungs felt as if they were in a vise that had cut their volume in half. If she’d taken any more punishment, she had no doubt she would be dead by now.

  That said, she also had very little doubt she’d be dead soon enough, anyway.

  Dimangan could sense the specifics of the fear nestled in her head and heart. “He’s still not back,” he muttered. His tone made it clear exactly how likely he found it that the Iron Prince would actually return.

  Words were hard for Tala to form. She was grateful that their pact meant she didn’t need them. Stiffly, she nodded, while she sent Dimangan a wave of resigned cynicism: Of course he’d come back. He had to. He was too much of a coward to try surviving on his own.

  “In Sanbu, maybe,” Mang said. “He’s in his own country now, as he was quick to remind us. No place a person feels more comfortable, and comfortable people aren’t careful people.”

  Tala closed her eyes again and leaned back. She understood Mang’s reticence. He’d lost more to Tomoda than anyone else she knew. And she herself could hardly think to trust Iron Prince Jimuro, living face of the enemy. But the truth was, the prince had been right when he’d stared down at her over the rim of his glasses and told her what was what. For better or worse, he was her only hope now.

  She’d obviously known him to be royalty, but that moment had been the first time she’d truly
appreciated the fact that he was going to be a king. As he’d issued that ultimatum to her, she’d glimpsed whatever dented steel lay at the heart of the soft, shrinking young man she’d been guarding. She still didn’t trust him, but with that demonstration she at least believed that if he were inclined to honor his word, he might actually be able to pull it off. If she couldn’t trust him to do the right thing for the right reasons, she could at least trust him to do it for the wrong ones.

  “Stop thinking about him,” Mang muttered. “I just got his stupid voice out of my head.”

  Tala closed her eyes again, and tried to shift her thoughts as a courtesy to Mang. It was hard for her to think about anything but the question of whether or not she’d live through this, and that all hinged on Prince Jimuro now.

  But then, with a flash of violet, she remembered how she’d come to be here in the first place.

  Dimangan’s entire body stiffened up as the thought leaked into his own mind. “Who was he?”

  Tala groaned and shook her head. How the hell was she supposed to know? That man, the splintersoul, was hardly the first bloodthirsty lunatic who’d tried to kill her.

  “No,” Mang said with admirable evenness. She knew the pain he was in. How did he always sound so calm? “But he is the most…interesting.” His mouth creased into a thoughtful frown. “You can’t tell me you don’t think it’s weird, Lala. You were the only person in the world with two shades. The only real splintersoul. And then this guy shows up and he’s got a whole army?”

  Tala grunted. Seeing Sunny and Tivron turned against her had told her exactly how the man had recruited. Under that coat of his, she’d seen a body flecked with pactmarks and scars. And it wasn’t hard to imagine the dead Shang and Sanbunas he’d left behind in the process of collecting.

  “That was why I thought you might have some insight,” Mang said. “You’re the only one to—”