“This isn’t about clans or oaths. This is about you and me!”
“Gods, how you flatter yourself…”
“You should be dead, Hiro! You failed Yoritomo, and you should have killed yourself to restore your honor. But when the Guild offered you a chance to come after me, you grabbed it by the throat and held on for dear life!”
Yukiko stepped forward, Hiro stepped back, muscles ridged, blood trickling from his nose. The Honorable Death shuddered as her belly clipped Yama’s outer walls, the sky-ship sinking lower as her sundered inflatable continued to collapse.
“You never wanted to rule an empire. You didn’t want the Tiger throne or to reforge a dynasty or to marry Aisha. You wanted revenge. To hurt me the way I hurt you. You call yourself honorable, but underneath your codes and oaths, you’re just a spoiled little boy. Stamping his feet and dragging the nation to ruin because he didn’t get his way.”
She waved her hand at the destruction going on all around them.
“You know what the Guild are. You know what will become of this land if they remain. But you didn’t give one solitary speck of shit for your family or your clan or your country when they offered you your noose. You didn’t sacrifice a godsdamned thing except your honor when you got into bed with those bastards.”
“And you?” Hiro spat. “What have you sacrifi—”
His question was snapped in half by a hoarse cry of pain. He sank to his knees, iron fist at his temple, thick, salty floods spilling from his nose.
“My father isn’t enough for you? My friends?”
“You … you did not give … them. They were … taken.”
“They were taken,” Yukiko leaned in close, teeth bared. “By people like you. But not anymore. You won’t ruin this place, or our children. You won’t do to them what you did to me. I want you to know that as you die. Everything you’ve done has all been for nothing. It’s all going to burn. And I’m the fire you helped create.”
“And years from now … when you speak to those children … will you tell them you killed their own father?”
Her smile was the color of murder.
“Who says I’m ever going to speak to them about you, Hiro?”
She tightened her grip on his mind, hand clenching to fist.
“They’ll never even know your name…”
Squeeze.
45
ALL THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN
“Father!”
“Kaori!”
The Truth Seeker’s engines drowned their shouts, hissing trails of shuriken fire filling the space between each breath. Their ladder unraveled thread by thread. They swayed in the grip of the wind, momentum, gravity, skies filled with pursuing Guild vessels, spitting death. Daichi’s muscles were tearing as he clung to the ladder with his right arm, his daughter’s hand with his left. Black on his lips. Bubbling from his lungs.
Gods, not now, please …
Kaori’s scream. Paper-thin across a bleeding sky.
“Let me go!”
“N-no!”
“If you don’t we’ll both die!”
Fingers numb. Grip melting.
“I will not let you go!”
Guild corvettes swarmed about them, the Seeker’s ’throwers riddling the closest with spinning steel, the craft splitting open and dying on the deadlands below. But three more skipped and spun through the glimmering hail, blood-red eyes staring down iron sights at the pair who’d slain their father. Their foremost. Their First Bloom.
Popopopopopopopopop.
Shuriken fire tore his shoulder, his stomach, deep into his chest; bursts of bright pain. Kaori screamed as he lost his grip, fading beneath the rushing wind as they fell. And still he held her hand, pulling her close as they tumbled earthward, the space between them wet with blood, the pain nothing at all. End over end as he held her tight, just as he’d done when she was a girl. She wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes, tumbling, spinning, over and over. Nothing mattering save they were together, here, at the last.
“I love you, Daughter.”
The wind snatched the words like a thief. Carried them away with sticky fingers. But she squeezed him tighter. She knew.
Its roar filled him now, muting all else. Nothing but wind. Sight fading as the blood fled, painting her face and the black snowflakes behind. The roar filled his ears, swelling until it engulfed him, the color of new snow on Iishi peaks. Glittering with metallic opalescence, cut through with swathes of deepest black.
Amber eyes.
Iron-gray claws.
Snatching them from the air, gentle as mountain streams, strong as the stone beneath, swooping low and slowly up, past the ruined corvettes, falling from the skies like rain. The air filled with beautiful, savage cries, Daichi’s fading eyes filling with tears of wonder, a half-dozen arashitora cutting through the air and the Guild ships like katana. Sleek and sharp, smaller than Buruu, somehow more graceful, a peerless verse penned by the Thunder God’s hands.
Females …
No strength to lift his head, warmth fleeing his body. Kaori was screaming to hold on, don’t let go, Father, please. But hadn’t they fallen already? Were they falling still?
He wanted to sleep. Close his eyes and rest. So tired. Years of war, of blazing lotus fields, of striving with every breath to make this a world in which she might bloom rather than rot. And all for nothing. All had come to pass, exactly as Tojo promised.
So tired.
Wood beneath him, the smell of exhaust smoke and rumble of engines. A woman with silver razors at her back, pressing the wounds in his chest and belly. Coughing black, distant pain, hands and feet already numb.
“Father.”
Kaori’s plea, desperate and tear-stained.
“Father, hold on.”
“Tojo’s ending … was just as he said.” He looked down at her hand, wrapping his like a bloody bow. “Everything we did … brought all this to pass. We helped them…”
“Father, don’t talk. Hush now…”
“No, you must listen.”
“Please—”
“No!” Fear bubbled on his lips. Despair. Weightlessness. “There is no escaping fate. No defeating an enemy … who knows the shape of things to come. Shima will die … The Endsinger comes. What will be, will be…”
“The Endsinger?”
“I am sorry, Daughter. I sought—” A cough, tearing his chest; bloodied, broken glass. “I sought to give you … a future. But I … I only ensured their future came to pass…”
Kaori turned to the others, tears in her eyes. “Help me with him. Get him up.”
The woman with the silver arms spoke. “We should not—”
“Get him up!”
“All for nothing…” he breathed.
He felt hands on the edge of his numbness, pulling him to his feet. He had no strength to stand, but they held him, Kaori by his side, keeping the cold at bay. Blood on his tongue amidst ashen paste, staring over the railing at First House; a yellow stain amidst a deadlands sea.
“You have given us a future, Father. The Guild can’t see all things. This I promise you.”
Her face was wet with tears. But in her voice, he heard a fire to match the one he’d lost.
“If they could foresee all, they’d have foreseen this…”
She pointed to First House, the sky between filled with Guild ships and shrieking thunder tigers. The edges of his vision darkening, closing like slow curtains; the onset of night after a long, cold day. But as he watched, a tiny spark bloomed—just a match-flare at first, burning in his growing gloom. The spark became a blossom, a sun-harsh flare, lighting the sky like summer days, a series of concussive blasts arriving seconds behind. The bricks, mortar, glass and stone of First House disintegrated in the light, blown away like dust in a winter wind. A blast of heat hit his face, banishing the awful chill, melting the fear. The certainty. The seed of fatalism threatening to steal all he was, here at the last.
“Do you see, Father???
? she cried over the growing thunder.
“… I see…”
“We decide! Not gods! Not fate! We choose!”
The explosion was impossible, splitting the Tōnan mountains asunder, the clouds now made of boulders and dust. Their ship shuddered through a trembling sky, cries of alarm spilling across the deck. He sank to his knees, daughter holding him tight. Concussion after concussion, mushroom-shaped, the pair lost in all but each other’s arms as the Seeker was tossed like a paper kite in a burning wind.
Years passed? Moments? He couldn’t tell which. Only that there was no pain now. Kaori laid him down on the deck as the air finally fell still, skies bruised with dirt, debris like rain.
“We choose…” he rasped.
Kaori looked down on him, face streaked with blood, tears, steel-gray eyes shining bright in a mask of ash and grit. So like her mother. A smile that stole his breath, if only she allowed it to bloom. With all the strength he had left, he reached up, cupped her cheek, running his thumb down the scar on her face. The wound on her soul never fully healed.
“Choose, then,” he breathed. “To be free … of him.”
“Father…”
“Choose … to be happy.”
She closed her eyes, weeping, her whole body wracked with the sobs.
“Promise me, Kaori.”
Her arms around his neck, cheek pressed against his, his daughter in his arms.
“Promise me.”
“I do.”
A gentle sigh.
A smile on his lips.
The skies about him raining the ruins of all that would have been.
“I promise.”
* * *
The Artificer screamed as the iron-thrower shot punched through his shoulder, dropping him to his knees. Kin gasped, blistered palms tearing wide. Cries of alarm spread through the Earthcrusher’s belly as Shinji dropped from the transmission housing to the deck, the floor beneath him seething as the Earthcrusher continued its march.
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM.
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM.
The wounded Artificer seized the boy’s ankle. Kin fired again, the shot going wide, sparking bright on greasy metal. More shouting, brass shapes rushing through steam and smoke. Shinji dragged the detonator from his belt, but a savage kick sent the device spinning off into the darkness. Kin fired again, the shot ricocheting off the Artificer’s helm, sending him reeling into cover. Rocket packs flared, Guildsmen closing in on Kin’s vent. He fired off a handful of shots, hoping they’d just keep their heads down. Shinji cried out as the wounded Artificer wrapped him in a headlock, the boy’s strength no match for a fully-suited Guildsman.
Another shot. Another. Sweat in Kin’s eyes. Chi on his tongue. Shaking so badly he could barely breathe. An Artificer landed on a gantry just across from his vent and Kin fired, hitting the Guildsman’s thigh and dropping him like a stone.
“Kin!” cried Shinji. “The detonator!”
Another shot, cracked off at a brass shape ducking behind the drive train. The iron-thrower clicked empty. With a ragged gasp of pain, he pulled himself from the vent, crashed onto the mesh below, crying out. Flares of blue-white flame. Boots pounding metal grilles.
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM.
“Check the transmission!” A rasping metallic cry.
“They planted something!”
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM.
Kin caught a glint of metal beneath a knot of cooling pipes, the scarlet globe atop the detonator winking at him. He pulled himself to his knees, burned skin tearing wide, lunging across the floor just as two Artificers rounded the corner, a third landing in a halo of blue-white on the gantry above. Dragging himself under the narrow space between pipes and floor, hand outstretched, fingertips brushing the burnished metal case and failing to find purchase.
“There are explosives in the transmission!”
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM.
“Get them out!”
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM.
The shuddering jolt of impact, great scythe-arms smashing ancient walls to splinters, the bastion of Kitsune-jō within striking range at last. Kin felt a vise grip seize his ankle, dragging him back as he roared in pain. He lunged at the detonator once more, just touching the edge.
Stretching.
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM.
Gasping as the Guildsman dragged him back.
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM.
Too far.
The pain too much.
Her lips were soft, a feather-light brush against his own, gentle as falling petals.
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM.
“Yukiko…”
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM.
He lunged, ligaments tearing, seizing the detonator as the Artificer tore him out from under the pipe. An explosion filled the engine bay, deafening in the confined space, Kin crying out as the air caught fire. The concussion knocked everyone to the floor, pieces of atmos-suit and bloody meat falling like red snow over the din of buckling, tortured metal. A ragged, ear-splitting shriek, the broken-tooth growl of snapping drive rods and popping rivets.
The floor swayed, like the deck of the Thunder Child on the night he and Yukiko stood together in the clean rain. It dropped away on one side, the behemoth listing, Kin tumbling away and coming to rest against the cooling pipes, chest heaving, squinting through the choking fumes at the transmission housing, the black smoke spilling from its innards.
The great engines trembled, stalled, and went silent. Metal shuddered and breathed one final sigh. And at last, the Earthcrusher fell still.
But only for a moment.
* * *
Yukiko was closing a final grip around Hiro’s mind when the flare scorched the southern horizon. She turned to stare, watching the sky brighten, almost as if a second sun were cresting the island’s lip. The deck shook beneath them, the wounded hulk of the Honorable Death smashing houses away with her belly as she slowly fell. Smoke drifted across the deck as aftershocks from the Tōnan explosion finally reached them, the very air shuddering.
Hana and Kaiah swooped in from the west, a flaming ironclad tumbling from the skies behind them, the girl’s voice burning bright in the Kenning.
The rebels did it! First House is gone!
The groan of tortured metal caught her ears next, Yukiko looking up to see the Earthcrusher toppling to its knees, great clouds of smoke spilling from its belly. The scythe-arms still twitched amidst the splintered walls of Kitsune-jō, but the behemoth seemed incapable of walking any farther. Elation filled her heart, the sky about her now ablur with the bloodied remnants of the Everstorm pack, calling to each other across the smoke and ash. Blood-smeared. Amber and green eyes alight with victory. Even Sukaa seemed aglow with it.
“Do you see, Hiro?” She smiled down at the Daimyo, on his knees, face painted in blood. “First House is gone. Earthcrusher paralyzed. Yama still stands. Everything. All you’ve done. All for nothing.”
The Honorable Death hit the ground, gouging a furrow through the Market Square. The ship trembled, crashing nose-first into a temple to Amaterasu. Yukiko clutched the railings as the skip came to a shuddering stop. Clouds of dust, the sound of distant fighting, crackling flames.
She lifted her hand, brow creased in concentration as the Daimyo of the Tora zaibatsu clutched his temples and curled up in a ball on the deck.
“Good-bye, Hiro…”
A tremor.
Just a whisper at first, the faded echo of a quake long past. The ground aflutter beneath them, small stones dancing on broken cobbles, roof tiles falling to their end. But growing louder now, stronger, the earth shaking, bucking, a rumbling, crumbling groan seeping up from underground. Sukaa’s voice rang in her mind.
~ BEWARE. ~
Buruu roared, eyes flashing.
YUKIKO, GET ON MY BACK!
Yukiko leapt onto his shoulders, the mighty thunder tiger taking flight as the ground roared, like a spoiled child in a tantrum, flat on its back and screaming its displeasure.
Yama’s walls split and crumbled, the
entire city shaking, houses collapsing, dust pall rising, flagstones splitting wide and tumbling down into new fissures, grinning like toothless smiles. Terror spilling across the city, taller buildings now crumbling to ruin, the five-sided tower of Chapterhouse Yama listing, sky-spires toppling into twisted wreckage, the ruins of the Amatsu bridge dropping away into black, shivering water.
What in the name of the gods …
EARTHQUAKE.
Like none I’ve ever seen …
They flew above the city, looking south toward the Kitsune deadlands, the great swathes of choking, ashen earth. Yukiko felt dread in her chest, cool and sickening, watching the pall of ash-gray fumes roiling as the cracks in the tortured earth split wider and wider, crumbling into a darkness her eyes wanted to slip away from, faint screaming in the back of her mind.
… WHAT IS THAT?
You hear it too?
THROUGH YOU. WHAT IS IT?
Gods …
She remembered the Everstorm, the darkness she’d glimpsed as she looked toward Shima through the Lifesong. She reached into the Kenning, into the fire of every living thing around her, the storm of self and spirit and breath, feeling the pulse of the world.
The screaming grew louder in her ears, Buruu roaring in fear, the other arashitora echoing his unease. Distress in her womb, her hand pressed against the swell of warmth and life growing there. She focused on the sound—that horrid, glistening wail, like bloody nails drawn shrieking down the chalkboard of her skull—and amidst the terror, the primal, paralyzing fear of it all, she heard an inverted rhythm, drummed onto the skin of madness by the claws of stillborn children. And she realized it wasn’t the sound of screaming at all. Not a wail or a howl or a cry. It was …
IT IS A SONG.
A mother’s voice, black with hate and longing, drifting from the edges of time. The blind Inquisitor’s words echoing now in her head, his grin that of a corpse-mask.
“The little ones are already here, after all…”
And looking into the deadlands fissures, guts clawing the insides of her throat in their bid to escape, she saw them. Silhouettes against a deeper darkness, crawling up from the cracks, coated in ashes, eyes glowing bloody red. Humanoids with midnight blue skin, long, sinuous arms, underbites overfull with grinning teeth. But beyond them, dragging themselves up out of the widening pits leading down to gods knew where