Steel Crow Saga

by Paul Krueger

  He’s no threat to me, Jimuro reminded himself.

  The world is more than you, came back her stern reply. What of them?

  Out the window, night fell, and the rain fell with it. It streaked on the train’s windows, blurring the distant lights of the towns they passed. He wondered who was currently in those homes and buildings, living by those lights. Did they know their prince walked among them again at last? Would they be heartened to learn that he had returned to serve and protect them? Or would they just see him for the incompetent boy-king he knew he was? Would he be yet another problem heaped onto their shoulders, when they already had enough to be getting on with?

  And just like that, the town was gone again, the lights of its train station already a memory. Once again, the outside was nothing but darkness and falling rain.

  He closed his eyes, looking to conjure up his mother again so he could draw from what strength and wisdom she’d been able to pass on to him.

  But the only face that swam before him was Tala’s, eyes glinting with stern disappointment.

  His eyes flew open.

  The compartment door slid open. “That was fast,” Jimuro said, turning around. “I suppose you—”

  But instead of Kosuke, a short young woman stood there, wearing a long white overcoat, a white hat, and a shiny cicada mask. She bowed, though not even half as low as she should have to greet a man of his station. She straightened back up, and from her coat produced a large pipe that she lit with a match.

  “Iron Prince Jimuro,” she said. “It is a genuine honor to make your acquaintance at last.”

  When Lee had left Danggae for good, shown the door by siblings who didn’t like the heat she brought home with her, she’d hopped a train that same night. Since then, life had been one boxcar after another for her. That was how things always went for her: Find a new place, find a new partner. Fall into bed, fall out of love, then follow her one rule right to the nearest train yard. So Lee Yeon-Ji was no stranger to riding the rails.

  She’d just never ridden them quite like this.

  This was no cramped, smelly freight car. She stood in the dining car, smack in the middle of the train. A phonograph piped moody jazz into the room, and the lights had been dimmed and small candles laid out to cultivate a sense of atmosphere. Fashionable riders knelt on cushions behind low, polished tables, chatting away over smoldering cigarettes and plates of steaming food. Still more well-heeled patrons crowded the bar, where a woman in a bow tie doled out cocktails in every color and shape of glass. Impeccably uniformed waiters hurried in and out of the galley, deftly navigating the narrow space while balancing entire courses on a single tray. Through the galley door, Lee could even glimpse a small walk-in fridge, the kind of thing she’d never seen on a Shang train. Even while traveling, it seemed, the Tomodanese ate in style.

  Lee was unable to keep a grin off her face as she sauntered into the thick of it. The aromas of Tomodanese food twisted her hungry stomach into knots, even though none of them contained a scrap of meat. But the real feast was for her eyes: Pretty men in suits. Handsome women in smart gowns.

  And most important, all the shiny things they had.

  Her fingers twitched with the longing to stick themselves into pockets and take whatever they could. She knew it would be so easy. Every mark in here had their guard down. By the time the first of them realized they didn’t have their wallet or watch, Lee would be the smallest shadow in their memory.

  But she stilled her fingers. Now that she’d ID’d the Iron Prince, she and Xiulan had reached a delicate part of their operation. And unfortunately, Lee’s part in what came next didn’t involve paying herself an early bonus for her good work.

  She felt an unfamiliar pressure on the skin of her stomach, just as she felt a matching flutter of excitement from someplace that was both inside her head and not. That was Bootstrap, and Lee could feel her excitedly pawing at the door that separated Lee’s mind from hers. Without Bootstrap summoned, her desires were more abstract, but Lee knew what she wanted: for Lee to turn right back around and bring her to her old friend, the Iron Prince. She was a good dog (though what dog wasn’t?), but this close to their target she was getting excitable. When Lee had actually laid eyes on the guy, it’d taken all her willpower not to just say her name.

  Easy, girl, Lee thought. This goes off right, and we’ll have plenty of time with your pal ahead of us. She didn’t know if Bootstrap could actually hear her words, but the sensation subsided enough for Lee to get her head back in the game.

  At the bar, she spotted her target. He was a big guy with wispy hair, whose name she’d picked up at the train station earlier: Iwanbo. The man was already in his cups, hunched over the counter and beckoning the bartender for another round with a snap of his fingers.

  Lee indulged in a small scowl. While she was working her first hustles, her brother Yeon-Ha had waited tables to keep the family fed. It wasn’t the kind of job they normally gave to Jeongsonese people, but he was quite handsome, and his features had been Shang enough so that, with a fake Shang name, he passed as long as no one paid too close attention to him. But even when they thought he was one of them, Shang customers would treat him no better than these sake-guzzling steelhounds treated their own servants. It squared pretty neatly with Lee’s understanding of how the world worked: Folks were always on the lookout for any reason to treat someone else like shit.

  Her scowl reversed itself as she imagined exacting some indirect payback all these years later.

  Unlike Yeon-Ha, Lee had never been prized for her looks. That, she’d decided at an early age, was to her great benefit. One bad day was all it took to rob someone of a pretty face. But twenty years of bad days hadn’t robbed Lee of her own brand of charm.

  As she approached him, she adjusted her posture, her gait, even the swing of her hips. She grinned at the familiar sight of heads turning in her peripheral vision. If she could grab that kind of attention without saying a word, this Iwanbo guy stood no chance.

  She didn’t walk to the bar so much as saunter, but she was careful not to be too showy about it. It took a light touch to avoid the act coming off like a put-on—or even worse, as desperate. But fortunately, a light touch was Lee’s whole thing.

  She held up a bill to the bartender. “Whiskey and a smoke,” she said. “But skip the light.”

  The whiskey was brown as a cigar and tasted like smoke. Before she set about her con, Lee treated herself to a quiet moment so she could savor that experience: a mouthful of whiskey that cost more than her childhood apartment. She slipped the cigarette between her lips at an enticing angle, then turned to Iwanbo next to her. “Trouble you for a light, soldier?”

  With a casual motion, he produced a metal lighter from his pocket. It sparked on its own, and Lee guided the cigarette’s tip to the flame. She was careful to keep the smoke in her mouth, rather than inhaling it. Smoking wasn’t her thing. But twenty years of movies had cemented the allure of smoking forever, so it never hurt to lean into it when she wanted something.

  “Thanks,” she said. “You headed down Hagane way, too?”

  That drew his attention for the first time. “How did you know I was going to Hagane?”

  “You look like an interesting guy, and it’s an interesting town. Not the hardest math I’ve ever done.” It was a well-practiced line, though of course she changed the place depending on who she was talking to. “Now, as it happens, I like interesting guys.” She cast a meaningful glance down at his empty cup. “And especially interesting guys who know how to drink. So I guess—”

  “I’m sorry,” Iwanbo said. “I understand what you’re doing.”

  A jolt of anxiety shot through Lee. She never got nervous when she was on the clock, but this had caught her by genuine surprise.

  “I genuinely appreciate your interest, but I love my wife far too much to even think about other women. I
t’s not a reflection on you, and I’m sure there are other men on this train your charm wouldn’t be wasted on.”

  Lee blinked. This, she could genuinely say had never happened to her before. “I, uh…thanks?” she said.

  Iwanbo nodded somberly and turned his attention back to his drink.

  Lee wasn’t about to give up just yet. She’d broken up marriages before. And besides, she didn’t even need to break up this one. She just needed to lure him into the baggage car so she could knock him out. He was Kurihara’s right hand, and with Kurihara himself nowhere to be seen, she’d switched to her secondary target.

  “You miss her, huh?” Lee said.

  “Every day.” Iwanbo sighed. “I never wanted to leave her side, but she insisted I had important work to do. I lost a good friend today, though, and I’ve found myself taking stock of what really matters. We all have such finite time, even when the spirits are kind. If I’m only given this one chance to walk the paths of the world, I won’t ever do it again without her at my side, and she at mine.” He slurped his sake. “Forgive me; my wife says I would talk to an empty chair if it looked friendly enough. I’m sorry to unburden myself on your shoulders.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lee said, still trying to feel out what her angle was here. “I’ve been told I’ve got one of those faces.”

  “In this low light, I can hardly see yours,” Iwanbo chuckled.

  Lee grinned and sipped her whiskey. “You’re missing out.”

  “So long as I have Nagisa, I’ll disagree. Have you ever been in love, Ms….?”

  “Rai,” Lee said. A Tomodanese surname for her was a tricky thing, since the Tomodanese language didn’t have an L sound. Rai, she’d come to understand, was the closest translation she could get.

  “Rai what?”

  “Just Rai’s good.”

  In the dim light, she saw Iwanbo’s brow wrinkle, not unpleasantly. “My friend that I lost today…she also went by her family name, rather than the one her parents gave her.”

  “If you think about it, they gave her the other name, too.”

  Iwanbo chuckled again, but it was a melancholy sound. “I guess they did. Why do you go by your surname, Ms. Rai?”

  A pack of colorful lies leapt to Lee’s mouth, but she held off. She could sell a lie to Iwanbo as easily as she could a few acres of farmland to a dentist with some disposable income. But when you were reeling someone in, the trick was to be strategic about where you let in the truth.

  “I miss my family,” she said. “We don’t talk much. They weren’t sad to see the back of me, but I still think about them. I guess it’s my way of keeping that torch burning.” She felt like she’d just taken off an article of clothing.

  Iwanbo considered this for a moment, then nodded. “That seems a fair answer,” he said. “And as for my other question?”

  “Which one?”

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  Lee swayed on the spot as she considered the question, and it wasn’t from the whiskey.

  “Tough question?” Iwanbo said mildly.

  “No,” Lee said. “Leastwise, I don’t think so.” But she considered all the partners she’d had first. Here before her was a guy so devoted to his wife, he’d only left her side because she’d told him to. She’d enjoyed her time with, say, Lefty, and his smile had always had a way of making her heart beat faster. But if he hadn’t screwed her over and fled to Jungshao; if the idiot hadn’t run his mouth and lost his guts; would they still be together now? And it wasn’t just Lefty. He’d had a healthy number of predecessors.

  Which meant Xiulan had a healthy number of predecessors, plus one.

  Iwanbo checked his watch, then drained the last of his sake and placed the cup facedown on the countertop. “Maybe you should go consider your answer to my question back in the quiet of your compartment.”

  Lee plastered on a grin and gestured out to the dining car. “And miss all the wining and dining? Not on your life.”

  Iwanbo frowned. “You seem like a nice woman,” he said. “Please consider taking my advice.”

  Lee balked. Who was in charge of this conversation, anyway? “Let me get the next round.”

  “I’m sorry,” Iwanbo said. He pulled something shiny from his coat and pressed it to his face: a metal mask in the shape of a spread-winged cicada. “Perhaps another time.” And then he produced a sawed-off shotgun from the folds of his coat, held it aloft, and cocked it loudly. “Nobody move.”

  Despite Xiulan’s long years of practice at maintaining a royal composure, she couldn’t keep her mouth from bending into her most savage, triumphant smile as she knelt opposite the Iron Prince. It was an indulgence she felt was well earned. Because after all, there he was: the most wanted man in the world, the scion of her country’s greatest scourge, and the ticket to her ascendancy and Ruomei’s downfall.

  “Whose acquaintance am I making?” Prince Jimuro said with a shrewd narrowing of his eyes. “I don’t recognize you from earlier.”

  Xiulan supposed there was no point in holding out the secret of her identity any longer. Not everyone could be Bai Junjie, whose showmanship let him go entire chapters incognito without anyone noticing a thing.

  Well, she was young yet. She would get there someday.

  She swept the mask off. “Your Brilliance, you are in the presence of Her Majesty Twenty-Eighth Princess Shang Xiulan, agent of the Li-Quan and Lady of Moonlight. And considering that I’m the one person in the world who wants you alive rather than dead, I think it would be prudent if you were to come with me.”

  She expected him to posture. After all, she’d just revealed herself as one of his enemies, come for him at last. But after only a moment, he slumped back against his compartment wall and rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “I can’t deal with this right now.”

  Xiulan stared. “What part of my introduction suggested to you that you had a choice in the matter?”

  “I’m the Iron Prince of Tomoda,” he said. “I always have a choice.” He waved a hand at her. “Go away. I have enough going on.”

  Xiulan felt like her teeth were about to snap her pipe in two. She knew not everything could be like it was for Bai Junjie, but in the myriad novels, short stories, radio plays, and movies that made up his canon, this conversation was something she’d never seen. She hoped fleetingly that Lee was having better luck neutralizing the other Cicadas.

  “What you have, ah, ‘going on’ is of as little concern to me as the well-being of the Shang people was to your ancestors,” Xiulan said coldly. “I was hoping that, monarch-to-monarch, we could comport ourselves with civility. But in lieu of your cooperation, I’m willing to use force to expedite proceedings.”

  “And I thought I talked a lot.”

  “I’m sure we can compare our relative levels of loquaciousness at whatever depth you like…once we exit the vehicle at the next stop,” Xiulan said tersely. She kept an eye on the door, but so far it hadn’t opened. Good. Lee was holding up her end of the plan. That thought was enough on its own to spur Xiulan to try harder to meet her halfway.

  “How do you imagine this power play of yours will bear out for Shang at the negotiating table?” Prince Jimuro said, not moving an inch.

  She caught herself before she could say anything too specific. “I have my own reasons for doing this,” she said. “And someday, Shang and the rest of the world will be grateful I did. Now, I believe that’s all the explanation you require to proceed with this endeavor, so if you would be so kind…”

  Prince Jimuro tapped his cup to the table, then knocked back its remaining sake and folded his arms over his chest. “You’ve already told me you need me alive,” he said. “That doesn’t leave you with much bargaining power, Your Majesty.”

  At last, they were on territory she was more prepared to face. Each time she’d fantas
ized about finally apprehending Iron Prince Jimuro, Xiulan had imagined some version of this conversation. So she leaned forward and said, “Your safety is guaranteed, Your Brilliance.” She glanced meaningfully over her shoulder. “But such a bargain includes no provisions for the safety of your subjects…”

  In truth, she had no idea if the gambit would work, because she had no idea what sort of man the Iron Prince was. If she’d issued that threat to Ruomei, her dear sister would have gladly let a hundred Shang citizens die if the net balance still tipped in her favor. If Prince Jimuro ended up being cut from the same cloth, it diminished her power in this moment, but surely she was doing the world a service by removing him from his seat of power anyway.

  That said, Xiulan had done her detective work. She was not without a good guess.

  Prince Jimuro glared at her. “My subjects are—”

  “Are you on the verge of saying innocent, Your Brilliance?” said Xiulan. “Because if that’s indeed your assertion, I could gladly produce half a billion children of Shang who would dispute that…” Her mind flashed to that clearing in the woods, and the small massacre that had greeted her sight. “…to say nothing of the ones who specifically owe grievance to the Steel Cicadas. Tell me, where is the rest of your guard? I’ve seen the murderers and cutthroats whose company you crave, but I’ve yet to see a single Sanbuna on this train.”

  The prince’s expression darkened. “No plan survives contact with reality.”

  “Spare me,” Xiulan said. “I know you were in the company of General Erega’s troops as recently as this afternoon. I’ve observed the evidence personally.”

  For the first time, the prince looked more than vaguely antagonistic. His entire body stiffened. “If you’ve done anything to hurt her—”

  “Don’t insult my formidable intelligence, Your Brilliance,” Xiulan said. “I know you departed from Lisan City in the company of an entire squad of Erega’s finest marines. And I saw the massacre they wrought in the woods north by northeast of here.”