Endsinger

  Not once did Kin glance in his direction.

  “You sent for me, Second Bloom?” the boy asked. “What is your command?”

  “The Inquisition have reviewed the information you gathered whilst on your … sojourn amongst the Kagé. It has been decided further questioning of this one”—a gesture in Daichi’s direction—“is unnecessary. You have already given us the location of the rebel encampment. Numbers and disposition. Assets and strength.”

  “I seek only to atone for past mistakes,” Kin said. “If my knowledge aids in bringing the Kagé dogs to justice, I consider the time I … wandered well-spent. The lotus must bloom.”

  “The lotus must bloom.” Pale smoke escaped from the little man’s breather.

  “Indeed.” Kensai seemed unimpressed. “With that in mind, it has been decided to liquidate this prisoner immediately.”

  Daichi grit his teeth, fought down a rush of fear. He coughed, sudden and violent, swallowing thick. Stilling himself, he fixed his eyes on the floor.

  Here? In this pit?

  “If you are certain, Second Bloom…” Kin’s voice drifted off into silence.

  “And why would I not be?”

  For the first time since entering the room, the boy looked at Daichi. The mechabacus on his chest clicked and skittered, counting beads shifting back and forth across their relays with timepiece precision, ticking down one second at a time toward Daichi’s murder.

  “I always pictured a public execution,” Kin said. “To show the skinless the price of defying us.”

  “The opinions of the skinless are not your concern. The commands of First Bloom are.”

  “As you say, Second Bloom.”

  Silence descended, tinged by metallic breath, the burnished pulses of the skins these monsters coiled inside. Daichi strained against his manacles, earning nothing but more purple on his wrists and another slap from the Guildsman beside him.

  “Then you will forgive me, Shateigashira,” Kin spoke carefully. “But why did you call me here? I do not care whether this rebel lives or d—”

  “Because you are to be his executioner. Kin-san.”

  Kensai reached into his belt, produced an ugly fistful of pipes and nozzles. Daichi had only seen a device like it once before, but he’d witnessed the damage it could wreak on ō-yoroi armor and the meat beneath.

  An iron-thrower.

  “You wish me to—”

  “I do, Kin-san,” Kensai said. “I wish you to kill this man.”

  “… Here?”

  “Now.”

  The boy seemed frozen, the breath in his bellows falling still. Daichi thought of his daughter, Kaori—all her fire and fury, those beautiful steel-gray eyes so like his own. The knife scar cutting across her features, the blow from a madman’s hand that set his feet upon this path so many years ago. To think this was where it ended. That this was the sound of his funeral hymn. The clank and groan of retching machines …

  Kin was staring at the iron-thrower in Kensai’s hand.

  “I…”

  Daichi’s lips peeled back in a snarl as Kin’s voice faltered.

  “Coward,” he hissed. “How did you muster the courage to kill Isao and the others? Did you face them down or stab them in the back? Izanagi curse me a fool for thinking you’d have the strength to do what’s right. You even lack the courage to face a man as you end him.”

  Kin looked at him, hands becoming fists.

  “You know nothing of what is right,” the boy spat. “Nor did Isao and his dogs.”

  “And so you crawl back to your master’s feet? Because of the actions of a few? You’d give these monsters the location of our village? Where our children sleep? Our children, Kin?”

  “Your children are rapists and murderers, Daichi. Pigs, all of them.” Kin leaned in close, the old man’s reflection snared in his single, glowing eye. “And pigs get put to slaughter.”

  Daichi spit at him then. A spray of black saliva, right into the smooth brass that passed for the boy’s face. With a furious hiss, Kin snatched the iron-thrower from Kensai’s hand, the device heaving a tiny, breathless gasp as he aimed between Daichi’s eyes.

  The old man looked down the barrel into bottomless black.

  He nodded.

  “Do it.”

  And Kin pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  She should not be here.

  Ayane stole up the access stairwell, silent and slow. A choir of machines sang in the chapterhouse belly, the mechabacus at her chest sang inside her mind, each false rhythm entwined with the other.

  She stopped at the habitat level, pressed against the wall. Running her hands up her arms, she tried recalling the kiss of Iishi wind on bare flesh, the way it made the hair on her forearms stand tall and tingling. But she could barely feel anything now; encased once more in glossy earth-brown skin, hugging her tight and providing no warmth or comfort at all.

  I should not be here.

  These habitats were for the Shatei—the brothers. False-Lifers like her had their own quarters, far across the chapterhouse and two floors lower. Her business was with the nurseries, the surgical implants, the machines that emulated life within the chapterhouse. Male and female flesh did not mingle—even when it was time for a False-Lifer to bear a new Guildsman into the world, she met only with the Shatei’s seed and an inseminator tube. Most Guild women lived their entire lives without knowing a man’s touch.

  But she had known. Had felt his breath upon her naked face, his lips pressed against hers, soft as strangled moonlight. She closed her eyes at the memory, pressed her thighs together, feeling goose bumps tingle across her flesh.

  No, she thought. My skin.

  She peeked through the stairwell exit, stole free when the way was clear. Silver arms curled against her back like a long-dead spider, she slipped along the corridor, searching the nameplates beside the habitat doors. At last, she found it—a thin brass slab, freshly engraved, the name he’d fought so long to keep and now had finally made his own.

  Kin. Fifth Bloom. Artificer Sect.

  She flexed the lever, watching the steel iris dilate and open into his suite. Fifth Blooms enjoyed accommodations only slightly less austere than the average Lotusman, but Kin’s promotion at least afforded him a touch more space. A small workbench. A bigger bed. Ayane turned and pulled the lever, the iris contracting with a grinding sigh, slowly strangling the light beyond. And there in the dark, lit only by the red glow of her eyes and the purity monitor above the ventilation duct, she stood and simply breathed.

  She must be mad for doing this. She risked everything by coming here—all she’d done, the blood, the lies, the hurt. But he filled her mind with daydreams, her belly with tumbling moths. The thought of their time together, the way he’d made her feel …

  The purity monitors smudged slowly from red to green as the air filters hissed, finally signaling the all-clear with a bright metallic chime.

  She worked the clasps at her back, above and below the empty silver orb swelling on her spine. Pulling the zip cord down, she bent double and peeled herself out of the slick membrane, stepped naked to Kin’s bed and climbed inside. And there she lay in the dark, picturing him as he’d been in the Iishi, pale and perfect, lips against hers, electricity dancing on her skin. She ran her hands over her body, imagining they were his, waiting for the moment he’d open the door and find her there. Where she should not be.

  What would he say?

  Would he understand how badly she needed him?

  She chewed her lip in the black.

  I will make him.

  She heard a clunk, a piston’s hiss, the iris portal dilating with the tune of blade on blade. Sitting up in the bed, sheet clutched around her, she smiled at the silhouette outlined in the doorway. Tall and lean, cut from black whispering cloth.

  Smoke drifting from the grin-shaped breather at its lips.

  “Oh, no…” she breathed.

  The figure stepped inside, followed by another, cl
ad head to toe in black silk. Their breathers weaved vapor puppets in the air. She smelled chi-smoke. Unfiltered. Overpowering. Their eyes were red, but not aglow—simply bloodshot from the smoke they breathed every moment of their lives. She knew them. The brethren who enforced Guild doctrine, oversaw the Awakening ceremonies across Shima, safeguarding the Guild from corruption in all its guises.

  The Inquisition.

  They closed the door behind them, plunging the room into a darkness lit only by the purity monitor, shifted again from green to red. The first Inquisitor spoke as though he were not quite … there. As if some part of him drifted in a cold and distant dark, only a splinter showing above this surface.

  “You have served well, sister,” he said. “But now the time for service is over.”

  “No,” she breathed. “Please…”

  “You are lost, sister,” said the other. “But we will show you the Way.”

  “No, not yet.” Tears welled in her eyes, spilling warm down her cheeks. “I did what you asked me. I brought him back to you.”

  “You did,” the first sighed, staring at outstretched fingers. “And you have our thanks.”

  “But you are poisoned,” breathed the second. “We have watched it spread. Dragging you down, leading you here, where no sister who walks Purity’s Way should find herself.”

  “Skin is strong,” said the first. “Flesh is weak.”

  “Weak,” came the whisper.

  “I did what you asked me!” Ayane’s voice rose, raw and growling, fistfuls of sheet clenched at her breast. “I turned him against them! Them against him!”

  “We have been wondering at the how of it.”

  She looked between the pair, shame rising at the recollection, her litany of deceptions.

  “… I sabotaged his machines. The shuriken-throwers he built them. I rigged them to fail when the demons attacked the village. And when that wasn’t enough, I … hurt myself. I made him think they…”

  “A talent for deceit, sister.”

  “He killed for me. Do you know what that feels like—”

  “Come.” The first held out his hand. “You shame yourself.”

  “You knew this future would come to pass,” the second said. “The moment you chose to step inside this room and seek the way of flesh.”

  “What did you think would happen?” Ayane pushed the tears down into her toes, felt them pushing back harder than she could hope to manage. “What did you think I’d become when you let me out of this cage? Feel someone touching me, really touching me for the first time in my life? Did you think I’d crawl back into this pit with a smile? What did you think I would do?”

  “This.” A gesture to the room around them. “Just this.”

  “You bastards,” she moaned.

  “Skin is strong,” said the first.

  “Flesh is weak,” said the second.

  “Come with us.” The first stepped closer, hand outstretched. “There will be no pain. Not like for those who remain. This quiet parting is a blessing to you, sister. A gift.”

  “No…”

  “She comes.” The first shook his head slowly. “Her children also. In a handful of years, all will be ash. No place for a child of man. You or any other.”

  “Godsdamn you…”

  “Come.”

  Fingers outstretched, gentle on her arm, the thought of another’s flesh against hers suddenly utterly repulsive.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  She snaked to her feet, quicksilver, the limbs at her back unfolding, air agleam with the shape of razors. Whistling chrome tore into the Inquisitor’s face, chest, outstretched arm. He stood taller, eyes wider, like a man fresh woken from a dream.

  “You dare…”

  He lashed out with his foot, a thunderbolt in her chest, crushing her mechabacus like it was paper. Blinded by sparks and pain, Ayane flew back against the wall, hit hard. She lashed out with her chrome arms again but he was gone, a hiss of smoke, an impression of black vapor moving along the floor. He coalesced before her, his fist demolishing her chin. She spun sideways, silver arms drooping as she crashed to her knees, chin slicked with red. She began weeping then, weeping as the chatter of the mechabacus died and she felt silence inside her head again. The same silence she’d known in the Iishi, blinking at the dappled day through a singing curtain of leaves.

  She looked up into bloodshot eyes, wide and pitiless, tunic torn, pale skin that had probably never felt sunlight. And as his bloodied hands reached for her, she saw the ink on his right arm: a coiled black shape where the skinless bore the tattoo of their clan.

  A serpent.

  His hand was in her mouth, pushing past her teeth. She tasted ash on her tongue, in her lungs, filling her eyes. She tried to bite with her broken jaw, tried to speak. To whisper the name of her love, the dream dissolving into blossoms of brilliant white. But there was no breath in her lungs, not even for the tiniest of words. Only smoke. Blue-black smoke.

  And so she held it inside. Close to her heart. And as the light became dark, and the blackness pressed down on her eyelids, her pulse spoke the word her lips could not.

  “Kin.”

  The light faded.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  And true silence fell at last.

  * * *

  Click.

  Kin blinked, his breath deafening, the iron-thrower in his hand refusing to roar. Daichi let out a ragged sigh, ending in a stifled cough. The weapon in Kin’s hand felt heavy as mountains.

  Empty …

  “There,” sighed the Inquisitor. “I trust you are now satisfied, Second Bloom?”

  Kin stood taut as a bowstring as the Inquisitor took the iron-thrower from his fingers. He could feel Kensai’s burning stare, his mouth tasting of lotus ash. He breathed deep to quiet his anger.

  “You said First Bloom wanted this man dead.”

  “He does,” Kensai said. “Just not yet.”

  “A test…” Kin realized.

  “And one well conquered,” said the Inquisitor. “Not only do you hand this rebel to us, but you would execute him with but a word. Admirable, would you not agree, Second Bloom?”

  Kensai stared for a breathless age, boy-child face aglow with blood-red lamplight. Kin watched him in silence this man who had been his father’s closest ally. This man he’d once thought of as uncle. This man who, even after he’d betrayed the Kagé, handed over their leader, clearly trusted him as far as he could spit him.

  “Admirable indeed,” Kensai finally said.

  “You have our thanks, Fifth Bloom.” The Inquisitor paused, touched his mechabacus, supple fingers dancing a reply. “Your presence is requested in the Chamber of Gears.”

  “I was headed to my habitat,” Kin said. “The hour is late—”

  “The brothers will not keep you long.” The Inquisitor bowed. “The lotus must bloom.”

  “… The lotus must bloom,” Kin said, nodding and numb.

  The air was filled with the rhythm of the machine, the clunk and clank of pistons and greasy iron, the rut and rumble of construct hearts inside concrete miles and black, metal shells.

  Without another glance at Daichi, Kin stalked out the door.

  4

  SCARIFICATION

  Kaori had honestly thought she loved him.

  Nobody would have blamed her. She was only sixteen, after all. Her father had done his best to protect her from the hedonism of the Shōgun’s court—it was understood amongst the nobleborn sons that Captain Daichi’s daughter was off-limits. And though her beauty was almost peerless, all respected the blades of the Iron Samurai commander enough to admire her from minimum safe distance.

  Her father’s overprotectiveness left her frustrated, and as she grew older, hungry. She’d listen to the serving girls giggling about their trysts, see beautiful boys watching her from afar. And in her frustration, she began to hate them. Did they really believe her father would make good on his threat to decorate his mantel with the privates of th
e first to touch her?

  They weren’t warriors. Certainly not men. They were boys. Cowards, all.

  Save one.

  He allowed his stare to linger, when all others turned away. He would smile, his gaze roaming all over her. It made her shiver. And as she felt his eyes exploring her body, fierce and hungry as winter wolves, she found herself wishing they were his hands instead.

  Yoritomo. Lord of Tigers. Shōgun of the Shima Imperium.

  He was fourteen years old, barely a year within his reign, but already tall and broad, lean muscles and bronze skin. When he spoke to his courtiers and ministers, absolute stillness reigned. When he stared into their eyes, they would bow their heads and look away.

  Fourteen years old, but more a man than any in this court of trembling children.

  He’d smile when he saw her. And though she could sense the storm clouds roiling over her father’s head, she would smile in return, flutter her breather fan before her face to cool the heat he brought to her skin. Daichi didn’t approve of Yoritomo’s blatant attentions, but Yoritomo was Shōgun, and Daichi his servant. Who was he to deny his lord?

  She’d heard the rumors, of course. Talk of the Shōgun’s cruelties. Even Yoritomo’s sister Aisha talked to Kaori in private moments, warning that her brother’s affections should not be encouraged. And though Aisha was a dear friend, still Kaori didn’t believe. It was too easy to find her mind wandering along with her hands, alone in her bed at night, imagining herself seated at his right side. First Lady of the Imperium. Days spent in the halls of power, and nights spent in sweating, blissful collisions between silken sheets.

  And so, when Yoritomo sent a missive that he wished to see her, she felt only the thrill. Not the fear born of open and clear eyes.

  Her father had been sent to the Province of the Golden Road to punish a disobedient magistrate. Her matron was sent to bed early by a few droplets of blacksleep in her tea. And in his chambers, she met him, her honorable Lord, blood-red silk hugging her trembling body, a nervous smile hidden behind a shaking fan.

  They’d sat and talked at first—or more truthfully, he had talked and she had listened. He spoke of his dreams, to see his Imperium stretch to every far-flung nation. And she’d pictured herself on a throne of gold—a Queen of the civilized world. And when he kissed her, she’d kissed him back, teasing at first, tasting at last, melting from the heat inside her.