A murmur spread amongst the throng; ripples on molten brass.
Shinji turned to the crowd, his voice rising above the whispers.
“Who would you have lead you?” he cried. “Who saved you? Who had eyes to see the truth, and the will to stand for what was right? Who laid the Earthcrusher low? Who saved you from madness? There is only one, and you know his name!” Shinji pointed aloft. “Kin-san!”
The words spread like fire on wet tinder—spitting and smoking at first, finally unfolding into bright flame. He heard them calling his name as they always did. As they always had. This cup before him, this choice he’d vowed never to choose. He didn’t want it—had never wanted it. He wanted them to stand on their own feet, speak with their own voices. They’d lived so long without faces or identities of their own, they couldn’t see the freedom just a breath away.
“Kin-san!” they called. “Kin-san!”
He looked down over the railing, destiny unfolding, life unraveling one thread at a time.
All of it. Again.
And again.
And again.
Hundreds of eyes, red as sunset, staring up at him with as much adoration as glass could muster. A sea of brass faces, stretching into dark corners, smooth and featureless. Walls of stone, dripping wet, the songs of engine and piston and gears blurring into a monotone hum, a broken-clock rhythm that seeded at the base of his skull and sent out roots to claw the backs of his eyes.
As if remembering the steps of some forgotten dance, he held his arms wide, fingertips spread, the lights of their eyes glinting on the edges of his skin. He stared at the gunmetal gray filigree embossed upon his fingertips, the cuffs of his gauntlets, the edges of his spaulders. The skin of rank, of privilege and authority. Everything they had promised, everything he had feared had come to pass. It was True.
This was Truth.
They called his name, the assembled Shatei, holding their hands aloft. And even as he drew breath to speak, the words rang in his head like a funeral song, and he felt whatever was left of his soul slipping up and away into the dark.
The multitude below fell silent. He looked down at the scarlet pinpricks in the dark, swaying and flickering like fireflies on a winter breeze. His voice was a fierce cry, hollow and metallic behind the brass covering his lips.
“Do not call me Kin. That is not my name.”
He felt his lips curl into a smile.
“Call me First Bloom.”
A cheer echoed in the dark, spilling from brass lips and iron lungs, an awful, shapeless roar that turned his insides upside down. He cut it off with a wave of his hand, voice ringing over the silence falling like a hammer. The smile grew wider, heart racing as he scrambled toward the light, the way out he could see, the final truth he’d always meant to speak in this waking dream.
He tore at the clasps about his neck, pulling off his helm and hurling it away. He could taste old chi and blood in the air, iron heavy on his tongue. He could hear the gasps below, the astonishment at seeing naked flesh beneath a brother’s skin.
“I am First Bloom, and this is my first and final command.” He looked among the multitude, his truth singing in his veins. “The Lotus Guild is ended. Disbanded. Forever. No more sealing ourselves off in suits of brass. No more filling the skies with poison, the rivers with tar, the earth with ashes. We will be part of this world. Not above it. Not outside it.
“No more Shatei. No more Blooms. No more Artificers or Lotusmen or Purifiers. Simply brothers and sisters. Orphans, all. United in fleeting grief at the death of our past, and hope at the birth of our future.”
The crowd hung motionless, petrified, the air crackling with electricity. Kin limped down the spiral stairwell, onto the machine room floor. He walked over to Shinji, Misaki beside him. He looked at them both, pleading, sweat burning the corners of his eyes.
“My name is Kin. Call me that, or brother, or nothing at all.”
Shinji looked to Misaki, clawed suddenly at the seals at his throat, compressed air escaping with a high-pitched sigh. He pulled the helm from his head, throwing it to the ground with a sharp bang. And grasping Kin’s hand, he nodded, pulling him into a fierce embrace.
“My name is Shinji,” he said. “Call me that, or brother, or nothing at all.”
Misaki was clawing at her face, tearing the membrane from her head, the light of her eyes dying in a pale burst of sparks. She turned to the crowd around her, offered her hand to a Lotusman beside her, searching that featureless mask with desperate, breathless hope.
“My name is Misaki. Call me that, or sister, or nothing at all.”
The Lotusman stood rooted to the spot, looking among his fellows, back and forth across that sea of faceless faces. Every bellows fell still, every heart catching in every chest, time itself slowing to a crawl and treading upon tiptoe for fear of it all. The air was smoke and cinder, iron and chi and blood, humming with possibility. And slowly, deliberately, the Lotusman popped the seals at his throat, lifting his helm away with both hands.
The flesh beneath was middle-aged, creased with time, thinning gray hair sheared to a shadow on his skull. His eyes were crouched in gray hollows and rimmed with tears.
“I have carried my father’s name for thirty years,” he said. “I have served this Guild longer still. It is all I have ever known. That skin is strong and flesh is weak.”
He looked down at his open palm, ensconced in leather and brass. And as the entire room watched in silence, the old man took Misaki’s hand, a trembling smile on his face.
“But I was born Shoujou. Call me that, or brother, or nothing at all.”
* * *
He’d thought him asleep at first.
Lying in his bed, head drooping slightly to one side. Kin had returned from the chapterhouse, so buoyed by elation that even the rising pain of his burns and the hole in his thigh barely slowed his step. His head still rang with names, unmasked faces, the hope and fear burning behind their eyes. He’d left Shinji to oversee work on the Earthcrusher, returning to the guest wing of Kitsune-jō. Ready to plead. To argue. To scream if need be.
“Uncle,” he said. “Wake up.”
He walked into the room, sitting beside him on the bed. It was then he noticed the faint stain seeping slowly through the sheets, peeling them back to find Kensai’s open wrists, a bloody knife, mattress soaked in scarlet.
“Uncle!”
Kin clutched the slashed wrists, roared for the guards, blood on his hands. Soldiers arrived, cursing, pushing Kin aside and trying to staunch the nonexistent flow. Kin backed into the corner, staring at the red across his palms, blinking mutely as the guards pounded on Kensai’s chest, trying to resuscitate the fallen Second Bloom.
“You’re too late,” he said.
Shaking his head. Tears in his eyes.
“Too late.”
50
THE VICIOUS HORIZON
Sky-ships cresting a swell of black snow, exhaust trails misting the skies above a city all but reduced to a catacomb. Sigils of the Lotus Guild, of Fox and Tiger, joined now by the remnants of the Phoenix fleet—the three remaining zaibatsu of the Shima Imperium united in a final desperate throw of the bones. One Dragon ship among them all, her captain striding her decks with ink-stained hands, a promise to a dead girl fresh on his lips.
Lines of troops, the light of a choking dawn refracting on enameled iron and folded steel. Clanking shreddermen towering above the infantry, battle-scarred and smoking, legs pounding with a wardrum rhythm as the Shiman army marched from Yama’s gates.
The skies around the fleet were filled with talons and feathers and rolling thunder, the arashitora pack weaving amongst ironclads and corvettes. Black and white, male and female, sleek and beautiful. Three stormdancers riding at their head: Yukiko upon Buruu, katana in hand, clad in freezing iron and black cloth; Hana astride Kaiah, unruly blond locks tousled about her eye, a chainkatana at her waist and a prayer in her heart; Yoshi last of all, clinging to Shai like a waterlogged r
at to a piece of driftwood. Refusing to look down.
And behind them all, lumbering with all the grace of a headless drunkard, the Earthcrusher marched. Shaking the ground with every step, splitting flagstones to the core, shells of fire-gutted houses collapsing to rubble around it. The behemoth was dented and scorched, its engines skipping and clunking. But still it came, held together by will and belief, its innards crawling with men and women who now called each by true names. A young man sat in its pilot’s harness, inside a metal skin that felt nothing like his own, mind smudged with pain and painlessness, staring out through the cracked portals of the Earthcrusher’s eyes.
South.
To the swelling black.
To the vicious horizon.
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM
Across the river, an army awaited. Twelve standards raised in the bitter-black wind, swathed in frost. Twelve houses assembled on the Kitsune plains, grim and proud. Goddess-sworn, children of a war decades long, a mandate of bloody vengeance clad in skins of wolf and bear. Ghost-pale skin and cobalt-blue eyes, stained and scarred by black rains.
Facing south.
The Stormdancer called a halt at the newly-repaired Amatsu bridge, her army poised before the gaijin’s backs. She did not dare hope.
Yet still she prayed.
* * *
Yoshi felt Yukiko’s voice echoing in his head, felt her strength reverberating in the Kenning, the heat behind her eyes and swelling at her belly. The girl reached out into the minds of the others: Hana and Kaiah and Sukaa and Shai and Buruu, forming a bridge between them all—a hub through which each could speak and feel and know. Yoshi winced as he felt the thoughts of the other thunder tigers, Yukiko’s own blazing psyche, a headache digging in at the base of his skull. He wiped one hand across his nose, blood smeared on his knuckles.
“Be ready for anything. We’ve suffered dearly for trusting gaijin in the past.”
Buruu growled across the latticework of their thoughts.
IF THEIR PLAN IS TREACHERY, THEY WILL COME TO RUE IT.
I can see Uncle Aleksandar, Hana nodded. But not Sister Katya.
Kaiah growled, her eyes narrowed.
- WOULD THEY BETRAY? AFTER WE RETURNED THEIR WOUNDED? -
“I don’t know,” Yukiko replied. “But expect no less.”
Yoshi sniffed hard, hawked phlegm and blood past Shai’s wing.
Seems sensible keeping Yukiko and Buruu up here, out of harm’s way. Hana and I can go make with the talking. I’ve a notion to meet this uncle of mine.
“No Yoshi, we go tog—”
I AGREE.
Shai growled over the fading echo of Buruu’s interruption.
*AS DO I.*
Yoshi smiled across the snow-filled skies at Yukiko, tipped the brim of an imaginary hat.
No sense risking all of us, Stormgirl. On the chance it does throw down, best if our ace in the Endsinger’s hole stays out of bowshot. We’ll return presently.
Yukiko bit down on her reply as Hana and Yoshi swooped away, circling down in a gentle spiral toward the assembled horde. The Morchebans had cleared a wide space around their commander, standing tall in his black wolfskin, staring south. He glanced back only as Kaiah and Shai came in to land. Yoshi jumped off the thunder tiger, desperate to get his feet back on solid ground. Hana slid down beside him, standing close, their hands touching.
The Kapitán looked at the pair wistfully. “You must be my nephew. Yoshi.”
The boy ran a hand across the pale fuzz on his chin, looked the big gaijin up and down. “You must be the fellow I’ve never laid eyes on before.”
“You have the look of your mother.” He smiled. “Some of her fire too.”
“What are you doing here, Uncle?” Hana asked. “Do you plan to stand against us? Or attack Yama once we’ve marched south?”
“Morcheban and Shiman strategy may differ in many ways, but in one respect we are very similar: we seldom begin our attacks facing the wrong way.”
“You’re facing south,” Yoshi nodded.
“Then south must be the right way.”
Hana looked around the assembled troops: the stern-faced men and boys, the Mercy Sisters with their hooked hammers and bonesaws, the frothing Blood-blessed. Banners of each House flapped in the wind, but she saw no flag of the Imperatritsa—no twelve stars to represent the unity of the Ostrovska Peace.
“Where is your Empress’s flag, Uncle? Where is Sister Katya?”
“Up on the hill. She will not be joining us. We will have to guess the coming and going of the storm on our own, and pray the Goddess finds us without the Sister to point the way.”
Hana was mute, staring at the Kapitán with a wide, hopeful eye.
“We know little of your gods. If there is a doom on the horizon, we cannot see it. So last night I proposed to my Houseguard we head south, along with any who cared to come, in order to conduct reconnaissance. The return of our wounded did much to win the hearts of the other House Kapitáns, and thus, they joined our march. Simply to see what we can see, of course.”
Aleksandar’s crooked smile cracked his frost-encrusted beard.
“We cannot ally with Shiman forces—such would violate our Imperatritsa’s command. But … if Shiman forces happen to be marching in the same direction, I am certain the road is wide enough to carry us all.”
Tears filled Hana’s eye. “Thank you, Uncle.”
“When all this is said and done, I will take you both back to Morcheba. Show you the Godstooth Ranges and the Endless Ice. The Maw and the Moonstag Keep. The family you have never known.” He looked at Hana. “The House you were born to rule.”
“But my eye,” she said. “The Goddess…”
“You may not be Zryachniye, but the Goddess still flows in your veins. She will flow in your daughters also.”
Yoshi watched the older man carefully, eyes hidden behind his goggles. He pulled a scarf up over his lips, his breastplate so cold it burned his skin.
“I’ll confess the thought of my little sister sitting at the head of the table plants a warm and fuzzy square in the chest. But we’re putting the rickshaw before the runner, maybe.”
“True.” The Kapitán turned to the horizon. “First, we march south. To blood and victory.”
Hana put her arm around Kaiah’s neck, squeezed tight. “Blood and victory.”
The arashitora purred, tail switching from side to side. Yoshi looked to Shai, to the skies above, to the sea of pale faces all around. He sighed.
“First part goes without saying.”
* * *
Days upon days upon days.
Trekking south into rising chill, raking wind, black snow crusted in her hair. Ashes in her mouth, a greasy film on her skin, thick with the stink of burned hair and corrosion and exhaust from the Earthcrusher’s chimney spires. Corpseflies swarmed about the ships, the men, clustering around their eyes or at the corners of their mouths. Storm clouds rolled overhead, like the tsunami that had heralded the approach of ancient serpents into the Bay of Dragons.
Yukiko could feel them if she tried—stepping out into the fire behind her wall. But the Lifesong was quieter now, muted by the black to the south, a chill creeping into her bones if she stared too long. The ancient dragons circled through the northern sea, surrounded by swarming children. But they and all their brood couldn’t help her now, she knew it. And so she kissed each one and sent them on their way, back to the Everstorm, her thanks ringing in their minds.
This battle wouldn’t be won by leviathans from the dawn of time. It’d be won by men and women and a handful of thunder tigers, a limping giant and the dream of a future unborn.
Presuming it would be won at all.
On they marched. The air thundering with the Earthcrusher’s tread, the storm above, the arashitora’s wings. Flies growing thicker along with the stink of charnel pits and dead flowers and open drains. Yukiko and Buruu spent much of their time on the Kurea, standing at the bow with the
wind in their faces. Not much in the way of words were shared for the first few days. The shadow of what lay ahead, what needed to be done lay between them like a fissure through the Stain. But she pressed against him regardless, simply standing in each other’s warmth, the solace of each other’s company. Let the Endsinger’s legions come. Let a thousand oni stand between them and victory. None of it mattered in this moment before the plunge.
I love you, brother.
AND I YOU.
She sighed, licked at cracking lips. To the south, she could see the haze darkening to muddy gray. If she squinted, she could see shapes swimming in the distant black. If she slipped too far into the Kenning, she could hear that awful song.
Yukiko ran her hand down Buruu’s cheek, across the barding at his throat.
You cut a fine figure in this armor. A portrait for the ages.
I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THAT. I AM NOT LIKE KAIAH.
She drew her hand away, falling to her side.
… We haven’t spoken … about what we plan to do …
I THOUGHT YOU HAD DECIDED. YOU WILL FLY INTO THE HELLGATE, AS TORA TAKEHIKO DID BEFORE YOU. DESPITE THE FACT THAT IN THE LEGENDS, HE PERISHED. AND THOUGH YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW, YOU WILL SEAL IT CLOSED.
I have to try, Buruu.
WILL YOU SPROUT WINGS? PERHAPS MANEUVER ONE OF THESE CLUMSY SKY-SHIPS THROUGH AIRBORN SWARMS OF YOMISPAWN?
Obviously I need an arashitora to fly me there. But it doesn’t have to be you.
DOES IT NOT?
Buruu, Tora Takehiko died when he closed the Devil Gate. Whoever goes in there … I’m not sure they’ll come back alive …
AND YOU WOULD HAVE ME SEND A PACKMATE IN MY STEAD? YOU CANNOT ASK YOSHI OR HANA TO STAND IN YOUR PLACE, BUT YOU WOULD ASK ME TO—
No. I just …
She sighed, looked toward Sukaa flying off the starboard side. The thunder tiger had refused the armor the Kitsune smiths made for him, making him faster, more maneuverable; a black blade, cutting the air to ribbons. Shai flew in wide circles around the fleet, sleek and effortless, speeding past the Kurea every few minutes, Yoshi clinging to her shoulders like a terrified child. Yukiko swore she could feel a vague jealousy in the dam’s mind, a distrust, perhaps even anger. But despite it, the girl couldn’t help but be awed at the sight of her.