The Lotus War - Kinslayer Part 19

"The prosthetic is fully functional I see." Faint amus.e.m.e.nt in Kensai's voice.

"It will serve."

"As will we all." Kensai covered his fist and bowed. "Shgun."

She lay on a bed large enough to get lost in, red silk pulled up to her chin, the tune of a hundred ticking clocks hanging in the air. A mountain of pillows was piled at her back, the curtain drawn away from cloudy beach-gla.s.s windows, b.l.o.o.d.y daylight creeping across the floorboards toward her. Machines chattered beside her bed, all dials and bellows, a language of punch cards and clicking beads and stuttering harmonics, cables snaking beneath her sheets. A small black-and-white terrier sat beside her on the bed, worrying a knotted ball of rope with puppy-sharp teeth. Its tail wagged as he entered.

She was not clad in a junihitoe as occasion would dictate; just a plain s.h.i.+ft of deep red, rivers of long, raven hair spilling about her shoulders. No powder upon her bloodless face, nor kohl around her bloodshot eyes. Her right arm was bound in plaster, her lips pale and bereft of paint, left eye still surrounded by a faint yellow bruise, skin split almost to her chin down the left side of her mouth, st.i.tched with delicate sutures. Yoritomo's beating had been far more brutal than most in the court were allowed to believe.

And still, she was beautiful.

"My Lady Tora Aisha." Hiro covered his fist and bowed from the waist. "First Daughter of s.h.i.+ma. Last of the line of Kazumitsu. I am honored you grant me audience."

"Lord Tora Hiro." She smiled faintly, as if afraid to split the sutures on her lip. "My heart lightens to see a n.o.ble samurai of this honorable house. I have not enjoyed such pleasant company for an age, it seems."

Her eyes flickered to the two False-Lifers flanking her bed, arms crossed over the mechabacii on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The sound of their breathing was a vacant hiss, muted sunlight glittering on bulbous crimson eyes set in faceless heads.

Hiro knelt by the bed. Spring-driven ceiling fans rocked in the exposed beams overhead, circulating a feeble breeze throughout the room. Sweat beaded on Aisha's brow, but she made no move to brush it away.

"I would speak to the Lady alone." Hiro looked up at the False-Lifers.

The Guildsmen shared a mute glance, remained motionless.

"Leave us," Hiro snapped.

"The lotus must bloom."

The pair bowed, synchronized, walked to the door as if they were two bodies and one mind, their boots clicking across the floorboards in perfect unison. The chromed razors on their backs gleamed as they reached the rice-paper doors, sliding the panels away and stepping out into the hall like dancers taking their place upon the stage. The doors closed with a harsh thud behind them.

"Thank the G.o.ds," Aisha breathed, voice trembling. "They have been with me every moment since I awoke. You are the first of Yoritomo's men I have seen since..." She glanced about with wide eyes, as if the walls themselves had ears. "They are keeping me like a prisoner, Lord Hiro. They will not permit me to see Michi or any of my maidservants. They let me speak to no one..."

She sniffed, swallowed thickly.

"You must get me away from them. The Guild. I cannot believe the court would allow me to be treated so if they knew what was happening here. I have nothing to do, no one to speak to. They drug me. Treat me like a sack of meat. My G.o.ds..."

She clenched her teeth, fighting the fear, the tears. He could see it took everything she had not to break, to cry like a lost child, alone and afraid in the dark. The puppy stopped playing with his ball, watched her with one ear c.o.c.ked, tail between his legs. Hiro sat and stared for an age, fists upon knees, face like granite. And then he spoke, his voice hard as a gravestone, as dead and cold as the ashes they'd interred in his Lord's tomb.

"You deserve this."

Wide eyes clouded with unspent tears, lips trembling like leaves in the autumn wind. A fragile, tiny whisper.

"What?"

"You deserve this, my Lady." Hiro stared at her, pitiless and unblinking. "You betrayed your brother and sovereign Lord. The Shgun of these islands, the man to whom all owed allegiance. You helped that Kitsune wh.o.r.e escape with Yoritomo's prize. And because of you, he is dead, the country in chaos, and this clan in tatters."

"Not you too?" she breathed. "G.o.ds ... have mercy upon me..."

"But they have, my Lady. They are far more merciful than I. They have given you the opportunity to atone. To alleviate the shame you have heaped upon yourself with your betrayal."

"What are-"

"You and I are to be married."

What little color remained in Aisha's cheeks faded away, blood draining from her skin as if someone had cut her throat.

"The announcement has already been made," Hiro said. "Clanlords of the Phoenix and Dragon have accepted invitation. We will be husband and wife by month's end. And together, we will reforge the Kazumitsu Dynasty, restore the line you helped destroy."

Hiro took Aisha's hand, iron fingers closing around her own. The movements were clumsy, gears hissing and whirring like a Lotusman's skin.

"So now I see." Defiance burned in Aisha's stare. Refusal to flinch from his touch. "Shgun Hiro, is it?"

"You always were an insightful one, Lady."

"So the Guild have bought you." Her voice grew stronger, underscored with anger and faint contempt. She glanced at Hiro's metal arm, lips curling in disgust. "Paid for and sold."

"Do not dare pa.s.s judgment on me," he growled. "Everything I do now, I do to right the wrongs you helped perpetrate."

"Wrongs?" Half laughing, half sobbing. "You speak to me of wrongs?"

"He was your brother, Aisha. You were honor-bound to-"

"Do not speak to me of honor," she snapped. "Your rhetoric about Bus.h.i.+do and sacrifice. Just look outside the window, Hiro-san. Look what this empire has done to the island we live on. Skies red as blood, earth black as pitch. Our addiction to chi draining the land of every drop of life. We wage war overseas, murdering gaijin by the thousands, and for what? More land. More fuel. Where will it end? When the deadlands split wide and drag us all down into the h.e.l.ls?"

"It will end when she is dead," he spat.

"Ah." Aisha looked at him with something akin to sympathy. "Now I see. It is not my betrayal that cuts you. It is hers. Yukiko."

Hiro's metal hand snapped into a fist. "Do not speak that name in my presence again."

"She loved you, Hiro-san."

"Shut up!" Iron fingers twitched.

"And still you failed. Even after you tore her heart from her chest, betrayed the girl who loved you true ... still you failed to save your Lord's life."

Hiro leapt onto the bed, metal hand closing about Aisha's throat. Her eyes bulged wide, color blooming in her cheeks as iron bit into her skin. The puppy barked, growling as he sank his fangs into the Daimyo's robe and tugged. Hiro's face was a madman's mask, eyes wild, lips flecked with spittle, teeth gritted. He pressed down with all his weight, watching her face flush with blood.

"Shut your mouth, you honorless wh.o.r.e."

Aisha's voice was a strangled whisper, tears welling in her eyes.

"I ... pity you..."

Hiro drew his face close to hers, twisted with hatred, staring into her eyes, watching their light fade as the moments ticked by into minutes. But as the end drew near, instead of terror and pain, he saw triumph, gloating and awful as she teetered upon the precipice. She did not struggle. Did not flail or kick or slap at his crus.h.i.+ng grip. And with a moan of horror he seized hold of the prosthetic with his other hand and tore it away from her throat.

Aisha collapsed, gasping, her mountain of pillows scattered, thick drifts of hair tangled about her face, like a child's plaything thrown into a corner when it was no longer wanted. The pup licked her fingers, whining. Hiro shrank from the ruin of the bed and staggered to his feet, gasping for breath.

"Very clever, my Lady." He wiped sweat from his lips on the back of his real hand. "The men always spoke of how you played us like a shamisen. But not today." He swallowed, shook his head. "You do not die today."

Regaining his breath, he knelt by the bed, rearranged the pillows, straightened the bedclothes. And with trembling iron fingers, he brushed the stray hair away from her face.

"No escape," he sighed, caressing the new bruises along her jaw. "For either of us. You will be my bride. The line of Kazumitsu will live on through us. At least long enough to see that b.i.t.c.h buried in an unmarked grave. After that, I don't care what-"

She spit at him, then. A glistening spray, right into his face. He closed his eyes and flinched, lips drawing back from his teeth.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d coward," she breathed.

Hiro grabbed a handful of her long, black hair, used it to wipe the spit from his eye and cheek. He coiled it in his fist, pulled her head back as she hissed in pain.

"I will leave you now, love." He planted a gentle kiss on her brow. "Think well of me until I return."

She glared at him, boiling hatred unmasked in her eyes. He stood and straightened his kimono, the swords at his waist, marched to the rice-paper doors. Sliding them apart, he turned to look at her one last time.

"Consider your position carefully, my Lady. Consider the people you hold dear. The maidservants who even now languish in their cells, awaiting judgment for their complicity in your betrayal."

"Leave them alone," she hissed. "They knew nothing of this."

"So you say. But consider your life is not the only one at stake here. And consider there are far worse fates than death."

"To live as you do, you mean?" she said. "On your knees? A Guildsman's slave?"

"It is honor that bids me kneel, Lady. Honor to my oaths. My fallen Lord." Contempt curling his lips. "A concept you would have no understanding of."

"Honor," she spat. "If you had any notion of it, you would have already committed seppuku, Hiro-san. Bad enough you allowed your Lord to perish. But for a member of the Kazumitsu Elite to live on while his Shgun lies slain..."

She glared with narrowed, hate-filled eyes.

"You are a disgrace, boy."

The ghost of a smile graced Hiro's lips.

As empty as the jade-green eyes that rose to meet her own.

"As I said," he nodded. "You always were an insightful one..."

14.

INTOXICATION.

Nothing.

Not a G.o.dsd.a.m.ned thing.

They sat together at the tip of a black spur, dropping away into a raging sea. Buruu curled up, chin pressed to stone, a barrier of fur and feathers against the howling wind. Yukiko huddled against him, almost drunk on his warmth, the rhythm of his pulse entwined with her own as she pored over her grim prize, line by painstaking line.

Bishamon's scroll was not, as she'd hoped, a work concerned with the Kenning's mysteries. Rather, it was a compilation of mythologies concerning Stormdancers and their mystical bonds to the thunder tigers they rode. Though Yukiko had never really considered it in the past, it made sense that every Stormdancer in s.h.i.+ma's history was possessed of her gift-how else would they bond with the aras.h.i.+tora they rode into battle? The scroll contained accounts of Kitsune no Akira's battle against the Dragon of Forgetting. Kazuhiko the Red's triumph over the One Hundred Ronin. An incomplete account of Tora Takehiko's heroic charge into the Devil Gate (she presumed the rest of the legends were inked on some other part of Brother Bishamon's body). But as to clues about how to control the power, or even accounts of it surging beyond control, there was no mention.

Yukiko hung her head, fighting back bitter tears, pushed knuckles into her eyes. Her hair hung over her face, the rain slicking it to her skin in sodden skeins. Lady Amaterasu was sinking to her rest, the Sun G.o.ddess burning the cloud-choked western skies a scorched and b.l.o.o.d.y umber. Night was falling, and with it, all her hopes.

Slipping into Buruu's mind, lips pressed tight, trying to focus the Kenning to a tiny point, like sunlight through an aperture of flesh and bone. Her skull ached, warm sickness swelling in her belly, pressing at her gorge. Sharp teeth waiting just beneath her skin.

Can you hear me, brother?

I HEAR YOU.

Wincing. Licking slowly at wind-parched lips. Too tired and disheartened to build her wall, to push bricks into place that would only come cras.h.i.+ng down again.

There's nothing in here that will help us. Legends of old heroes, long dead.

A bitter and helpless fury curled her fingers to fists. She looked up at a black sea rolling overhead, searching the skies for answers she knew were not there. The ache in her skull tightened its grip. The frustration made her want to scream.

AT LEAST THE EXERCISE WAS NOT AN UTTER WASTE OF TIME.

Why the h.e.l.ls do you say that?

The aras.h.i.+tora unfurled one clockwork wing, wrapped it around her s.h.i.+vering form. The static electricity made her tingle, wrapping her up in lightning's scent.

NO REASON.

She smiled, closed her eyes and rested her head against him. Holding him tight, she pushed warmth into his mind, the grat.i.tude she felt for him just being near. The promise he'd made her was bright in her memory, etched on the stone she set her back against.

"Beneath and between and beyond anything else I may be, I am yours. I will never leave you. Never forsake you. You may rely upon me as you rely upon sun to rise and moon to fall. For you are the heart of me."

WE SHOULD HEAD BACK TO THE IIs.h.i.+. THERE YOU CAN SLEEP. AND I CAN EAT.

I hope the Kage have been treating Kin decently. I worry about him there alone.

HE IS NOT ALONE. THE GIRL IS WITH HIM.

That worries me even more.

SURELY YOU ARE NOT STILL JEALOUS?.

Why on earth would I be jealous of Ayane?

... DOES NOT MATTER.

No, say what you mean.

He heaved a sigh, wind curling in the feathers beneath narrowed, amber eyes.