Steel Crow Saga

by Paul Krueger

“Come on!” Tala said, grabbing him by the shoulder. “That won’t stop him for long!”

  His glasses fogged over as he thundered into the passenger car, but even through the haze he could see the naked fear on the passengers’ faces. It turned his stomach to look upon them all. They were his people, and they were all in this position because of him. He had to do something.

  “Children of Tomoda!” he cried out. Passengers looked up at him, though their panic didn’t subside. He exhaled. “My name is Iron Prince Jimuro, son of Steel Lord Yoshiko and rightful heir to the Mountain Throne!”

  Now he had their attention. A few compartment doors had opened, their passengers trying to hear better. But Jimuro was most conscious of Tala, who was pointing to the front door imploringly.

  “I will offer up full explanations later,” Jimuro said, “but right now you are all in the gravest danger you’ve ever known. I need everyone to get to the front of the train as quickly as you can.”

  “I’m not going there!” cried one woman. Jimuro recognized her as the one who’d tried to sit with himself and Kosuke. “Those masked people are at the front!”

  Jimuro turned to face her, hoping his glasses had unfogged enough for her to see the earnestness in his eyes. “I won’t let them hurt you, madam,” he said. “You have that promise, on my honor as your prince and Steel Lord…” His gaze slid past her to Tala, who stood ready. “I will give you all the best protection that I can.”

  The woman stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded.

  And then she sank into a waist-deep bow. “Your Brilliance,” she said, then straightened and ran for the door.

  There was a fresh chorus of shouts and screams as people surged after her. Tala tried to yank Jimuro along with them, but he shook his head. “Not until they’re clear!”

  “Jimuro, this isn’t the time!”

  “The best time to put your people first is when they’re in danger, Tala! There’s no time better!”

  Tala scowled, then leveled her gun at the back door of the cabin. “What’s your plan?”

  “We get everyone to the front of the train.”

  “I was clear on that part.”

  “And then we detach every car but the first two. If we get everyone aboard to pact with the train’s metal and we reduce the weight to just two cars—”

  “—we could go fast enough to outrun him,” Tala finished. Her scowl lessened, if only a degree. “Smart.”

  “I have my moments.” He fixed his eyes on the door. “Can you feel how he’s doing?”

  Her annoyance evaporated, replaced by worry. “He’s fighting hard,” she said. “But he’s not invincible. He—”

  A bolt of blue energy shot straight through the sealed door, hitting Tala. She staggered back a step, as if the aura had actually had an impact on her. Jimuro knew what that meant: It was what happened when a shade discorporated and rejoined its human partner.

  “Sergeant!” Jimuro said. “Are you all right?”

  “That was Mang.” She glared at the door and steadied herself. “He’s coming.”

  Jimuro knew that when Tala said he, she wasn’t talking about her brother.

  His stomach knotted itself. He looked down at his hands and saw that they were dewy and shaking, like a pair of pale spiders.

  “Then we should be going.” He nodded to the open door. The passenger car was empty of civilians now. It was just them.

  As they stepped out into the rain once more, he saw that the door to the dining car was wide open. The low, warm light within beckoned them forward.

  He swallowed. “I’m sorry for everything, Tala,” he said. “I mean it: everything.”

  “There’s no time for that now!” said Tala. “We need—”

  Jimuro swallowed again, then planted both of his hands on the sergeant’s back and shoved her forward as hard as he could.

  She stumbled forward onto the landing of the dining car, already pivoting back toward him with a stricken look on her face.

  But he’d knelt, laid his hand on the join between cars, and flooded it with his will.

  With a clang, the join sundered.

  Tala was two feet from him. In a heartbeat, twenty feet. In another, a hundred. She was screaming at him, but soon enough her voice was swallowed by the thunder of the rails and its echo in the clouds above.

  * * *

  —

  This man, this splintersoul, had defied death to find him. It was clear to Jimuro now that this man would go to any lengths to avenge whatever crimes he considered Jimuro guilty of. And that meant that no matter where Jimuro went, even in the safety of the Palace of Steel, he would always be endangering the people he was sworn to protect and serve.

  So here he would wait for the end. Either he would kill the man in the purple coat, ending his threat forever…or he would die, and hopefully his death would slake the man’s bloodthirst. This was, as far as Jimuro could see, the only winning play.

  As the world slowed around him, he closed his eyes and bowed his head. He offered up a prayer to the spirits of his ancestors, that they’d guide his hand. He offered up another to the spirits of the Copper Sages, that if his line ended tonight, they would be able to guide Tomoda toward a brighter future. And he offered up a final one to the spirit of Tala, that she’d forgive him for leaving her again.

  From the darkness at the end of the train car, a shadow unfolded with a rustle of wings. The man in the purple coat landed on the deck outside, carried by his massive owl-shade. It disappeared behind him as he strode into the car. He glared at Jimuro with furious, bloodshot eyes, as Jimuro scanned the pactmarks on his skin. He understood now what he was looking at: a graveyard of Sanbunas and Shang, wrought in brown flesh.

  With this, Jimuro prayed to each departed soul, I will either avenge you…or join you.

  “Whatever you want with me,” he called to the man, “whatever crime I or my family may have committed to incense you so…” He spread his arms wide. “I’m here to answer for it.”

  The man stopped and looked at Jimuro as if he weren’t quite sure what to make of him.

  Jimuro walked toward him with big, confident strides. “You’ve stalked me all across the world, sir,” he continued. “You’ve slaughtered my guards, and the spirits only know how many of my subjects. But your hunt is over. You stand in the presence of Iron Prince Jimuro, son of Steel Lord Yoshiko, divine vessel of the spirits, beating heart of the Tomodanese people, and heir to the Mountain Throne.” He came to a stop a scant meter from the man, then straightened his glasses and drew himself up as regally as he could muster. “So let us end this.”

  The man stared down at Jimuro for a long moment, his expression inscrutable.

  Then he lunged. His hand wrapped itself around Jimuro’s throat. He yanked Jimuro close. And radiating low-simmering contempt from every line of his weathered face, he rasped, “I don’t give a fuck who you are.”

  Jimuro’s eyes widened as the man lifted him off his feet and tossed him aside like garbage. He skidded across the wet wooden floor, throat burning as he scrambled to regain his breath. When he blinked back tears of pain, he saw a long vertical crack down the center of his left glasses lens.

  He staggered back up just in time to see the man in the purple coat stalk right over to the open door at the front of the passenger car. He turned to face Jimuro once more, his coat billowing in the wind despite the fact that the train car had slid to a stop.

  And then there was a flash of light behind the man. A pair of talons wrapped themselves around his shoulders and pulled him back into the darkness.

  “No!” Jimuro shouted to the empty train car. This couldn’t be happening. He’d meant to sacrifice himself in service to his people. All he’d done was doom them, and now he couldn’t even catch up to try to make things right.

  But it didn’t make any se
nse. The man in the purple coat had chased him across an ocean. He’d carved his way through an entire shipful of Erega’s finest. And all of it had been because he wanted to get his hands on Jimuro. So why now, when he’d had his quarry dead to rights, had the man in the purple coat passed him by?

  Behind him, he heard the click of a compartment door.

  He whirled around to see one of the passengers who’d interrupted him and Kosuke earlier: the tall woman in the fitted black dress, with a sharp haircut framing a sharper face. He was about to shout at her for disobeying his orders to evacuate, but he stopped himself when he saw she was no daughter of Tomoda.

  “I hear that right?” she said in accented Tomodanese. “You’re really the princeling?”

  On the best day, he would’ve rankled at how casually this outlander addressed him. Today, in this very moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when so much else was at stake.

  “I don’t know who you are,” he said, “and I don’t know how long you’ve been there. But if you’ve been here the entire time, then you saw how dangerous that man can be. And if you saw how dangerous that man can be, then you understand why I have to find a way to catch up to that train and stop him, right now.”

  But the woman rolled her shoulders and sauntered toward him. Jimuro at last noticed something dangling from her hands: a thick strip of cloth, the same color and pattern as the train’s seating upholstery.

  And then, just a moment too late, he remembered what Princess Xiulan had said about her missing partner.

  “Well,” said the woman who could only be Lee Yeon-Ji. “That’s a long walk to ‘yes.’ ”

  “Jimuro!” she shouted into the dark, though of course it was already too late. That idiot. Shades take him, what had he been thinking? But even as she asked the question, she knew the answer: He was trying to do something noble and selfless, like a fucking idiot.

  She howled her rage as the rain fell around her. She’d explained this so many times: With him dead, this whole mission was for nothing. Did he know something she didn’t? Did he have some kind of cunning plan to get the better of the splintersoul? Or was he really as dense as the steel his crazy family loved to worship?

  Frantically, she ran her mind through the options. Mang had just discorporated, so she couldn’t summon him back until he’d recovered. Beaky was out of commission, too, and wouldn’t have been able to help her anyway. She could rush to the front car and try to get the Cicadas to stop the train. There was a chance they might, if she told Kurihara what kind of danger Jimuro was in. But to do that, she would have to get more than three words out before one of them just beheaded her on principle.

  She shook her head, splashing rainwater everywhere. Every second she hesitated took her miles farther from Jimuro.

  She ran into the dining car, grateful to see the place empty of civilians.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t empty.

  “You!” bellowed Kurihara, limping toward her with a gun in hand. He had a few Cicadas at his back, while others were busy helping the maimed Iwanbo off the floor. “What did you do to His Brilliance?”

  “Listen to me,” Tala said, putting her hands up. At least he’d saved her the trouble of finding him. “You need to stop this train right now, or else Prince Jimuro is going to die.”

  “I won’t allow you to make idle threats on his life, slaver,” Kurihara snarled, hefting his pistol and cocking back the hammer.

  “I’m not,” Tala said, fighting to keep her voice even. “I’m just telling you what’s going to happen if you don’t stop the train right now. He’s in danger.”

  “I don’t know what you barbarians did to him,” Kurihara said, “but you broke something in him. I know Iron Prince Jimuro, and the man you brought back here isn’t him.”

  Color rose in Tala’s face. Her head spun just from thinking about how much farther they’d gotten from Jimuro. “Will you listen to me for a second, you—”

  “I’m going to bring him back,” Kurihara raved, eyes wide and unfocused with rage. “I’m going to make him remember who he is. So you have one chance, Sergeant Tala. I demand that you—”

  “Give him to me!” bellowed a voice on the wind.

  Tala’s heart tripped over its own beat. No.

  She dove away from the door, and Kurihara opened fire. She tried to yell a warning as bullets slammed into the wall, but then it was too late. A green flash of light heralded the arrival of a snapping-turtle-shade; yellow, a giant wasp. A fox-shade with a teeming mass of tails stepped out of a cloud of red light.

  And striding behind them through the doorway was the other splintersoul.

  “Give him to me,” he said again, searching the train car with frantic eyes.

  The bottom of Tala’s stomach dropped out. For him to be here…was Jimuro dead? Had her mission been for nothing?

  A cry of fury escaped her throat as she whipped up her pistol and opened fire. But the wasp-shade flitted right into her line of fire, its body crackling with yellow energy as it absorbed bullet after bullet.

  “Who is that?” said one Cicada.

  “Another barbarian!” said Kurihara. “Light him up!”

  But the man moved like violet flame. The walls splintered in a trail of bullet holes behind him as his shades moved to engage the Cicadas. He muttered another name, and a hog-shade with four tusks appeared, charging at a full gallop toward the embattled Steel Cicadas.

  Tala tossed her gun aside and darted for the serving counter of the dining car. She made to vault over it and get herself into cover, but a hand wrapped itself around her ankle like a manacle, stopping her mid-dive. Her gut slammed into the bar’s corner, driving all the wind from her lungs.

  She rolled hard, yanking herself free of the man’s grip and kicking up at him. Her boot caught him in the jaw, and he staggered back with a groan. But before she could capitalize on the opportunity she’d just created, he came right back at her, that greedy glint in his eye. Shades take me, she thought. Is he made of iron?

  “Give him back to—”

  Tala swung herself off the counter, fist cocked for a punch right to his gut. He reeled back from the impact, and she swung at him again. “You should’ve thought about what you wanted from me before you took my squad,” she spat.

  Their faces flashed before her: Kapona. Minip. Ompaco. Maki, even though he and his crew hadn’t been 13-52-2.

  But neither had Jimuro, and she saw his face, too.

  She lunged, and even though she was at the end of her rope, she still had those hard reserves of rage to fuel her. They burned bright, hot, and brief, but this didn’t need to be a long fight. Not as long as she won it.

  He blocked her first punch, but she just used her momentum to pull herself in closer, aiming her knee for his solar plexus. If she could disrupt his breathing, she could stop him from summoning any more shades. Either she took him out, or she stalled long enough for the Cicadas to dispatch the other shades in the car and help her out.

  He turned his body aside and leaned, so that she caught his ribs instead of his gut. But already she was throwing another punch, and another, and another. The more punches she threw, the harder her blood pounded in her ears. This man had killed her squad, then rendered their deaths pointless. The only thing she cared about now was making him bleed.

  But while she landed her first three punches, on her fourth the man seemed to come awake. With the speed of a striking viper, he leaned away from her blow, then darted right inside her guard and slammed a palm hard into her chest. For such a weedy frame, the man had surprising strength, and it broke Tala’s footing. “Give him to me!” the man shouted again. “Give him back!”

  As he showered her with punches, she was barely able to stay ahead of him. She felt herself backing up into the counter again. “He’s not here!” she screamed. “You’re fighting for nothing!”


  “I can feel him!” the man in the purple coat roared. “Give me back my bird!”

  Tala’s entire body froze, and she felt like the floor of the train had dropped out from under her. But the man didn’t wait for her to process his words; his hand wrapped around her throat and shoved her backward onto the counter.

  Spots burst before her eyes as her brain, heart, and lungs abruptly lost their air. She fought against the urge to panic, but it grew stronger and steadier with each second. She thought fleetingly of Harada, only for a moment. It felt like it stretched on longer, though, because moments were now all she had left.

  Harada receded, swallowed by questions. His bird? But she hadn’t…she’d made sure that…it couldn’t be…

  She brought her failing eyes up to meet those of the man, and instantly she realized she’d seen him before. Not three nights ago, aboard the Marlin; years ago. In Lisan City. Before she was a soldier, but after she’d become a fighter.

  She expected revulsion on his face. Perhaps hatred. Maybe even just blind rage.

  But instead, even as chaos swirled all around them both, she saw tears of joy roll down his cheeks.

  “I’ve found you,” he whispered, not at her or to her so much as through her. “I can be whole again…”

  And then her entire body was immersed in a deep, dark pool of agony.

  In her tours of duty, Tala had been shot, stabbed, sliced up, and scorched. She’d had bombs dropped on her, shrapnel dug out of her, and even once survived getting hit head-on by a car. Some of her scars ran so deep, even her bones bore them. Those scars were formidable, but she’d thought none could eclipse the pain she felt when she invoked Mang.

  This hurt more than all of those wounds put together.

  Every inch of her body felt as if it were being clawed and burned at the same time. It was as if something horrible had been lurking inside her that at the man’s touch finally came alive, eager to rip its way into the world. She screamed, and she could hardly hear herself over the noise of her mind tearing itself apart.