The Lotus War - Kinslayer Part 32

Like all men and women interlock, foolish girl ...

"I said I wonder what you would say, if I asked you to marry me."

A slow blink.

"You are asking me to marry you?"

"No," he smiled. "I simply wonder what you would say."

"I would say you were crazed, my Lord," she scoffed, resting her head back against his chest. "I would say you have only known me for a handful of heartbeats. I would say the lotus you were smoking must be of a rare breed indeed, and wonder if you might lend me your pipe when you were done."

A soft chuckle. "That is what I thought you might say."

"A good thing, then, you did not ask."

Ichizo was silent a moment, a frown slowly creeping into his voice.

"What do you mean I do not know you? I have known you since last spring festival."

"You knew me after a glance across a crowded room and a three-minute conversation about poetry?"

"I knew you were beautiful. Intelligent. Possessed of a keen wit and a romantic soul."

"Oh, indeed? A romantic, am I?"

"Poetry calls not to a heart of stone, Michi-chan."

She was silent, one finger tracing the lines of muscle down his stomach, a landscape of hard foothills and deep valleys, traversed by a thousand gooseb.u.mps.

"And why should we not be married?" Ichizo was truly frowning now, rolling her off his chest, raising himself up to stare into her eyes. "I know you better than Hiro knows Lady Aisha, and they are to be wed."

"To prevent the entire nation falling into chaos," Michi replied. "To reforge a dynasty two centuries deep. I hardly think the Imperium will come cras.h.i.+ng to an end or spring miraculously back to life if we make our little fling official, my Lord. Not to mention the difficulties we might face squeezing our guests inside this pleasant little prison cell of mine."

"A fling?" He blinked. "Is that what you think of me?"

"Better that than the alternative."

"What, that I love you true?"

She stared deep into his eyes, watching his pupils for fight or flight response.

"That you still believe me part of the Kage rebellion," she said. "That all this is simply a magistrate interrogating a suspect." A small smile, just the right mix of hopeful and afraid. "That at the end of all this, you will break my heart."

Warning in his eyes. Pupils dilating. Fear? Suspicion? She had struck true, surely ...

"I might say the same about you."

Too much, silly girl. Too far. Pull away. Swiftly.

She pushed him back with a long kiss, straddling him, pinning his wrists above his head, long dark hair draped about her face. Leaning in close, swathed in perfume and fresh sweat, feeling him stir as she breathed the words, lips brus.h.i.+ng as if feathers against his own.

"Say it then, my Lord. Say you do not trust me. Say all this is a lie."

"But that would be the greatest lie of all," he whispered, leaning in for a kiss, denied as she drew back out of reach. "I am yours, my Lady. At your mercy. Ask anything. Give voice to any question and I will answer."

His smile seemed true. No veiled intent behind his eyes. He was so good at this.

So good it frightens you.

"Do you love me, then?" She moved her hips, the simplest gesture, s.h.i.+fting the entire world. He sighed with her, muscles flexed as she pressed at his wrists, leaned in close again, breathing into his ear. "Love me true?"

Her mouth upon his, gifting him the kiss he'd sought as he shuddered beneath her.

"I love you," he breathed. "G.o.ds help me, I do."

This is not real.

A voice in her head. The voice of a girl who watched her family butchered in Daiyakawa square. Who had grown hard and cold and fierce in the shadow of the Iis.h.i.+. Who lived only to see Aisha freed, the wedding stopped, the Guild's plans turned to ash and ruin. Who hated this man, his masters, the entire Imperium with everything she had inside her.

This is not real.

But as they rolled amidst the silk, his hands on her skin and his breath in her lungs, she almost forgot who she was, where she was from, why she was here. The little girl from Daiyakawa evaporating, scorched away beneath the fire of his touch, the heat of his skin, the flame of his tongue, leaving only her; a woman, loved and beloved, pure and unscarred and unafraid beneath a choking sky.

This is not real.

She almost forgot.

This is not ...

Almost.

This is ...

25.

IMPETUS.

Blood.

On his talons. On his tongue.

Buruu awoke on black gla.s.s, howling wind pus.h.i.+ng sea spray into his eyes, his wounds, bringing a bitter, antiseptic sting. The gash on his belly ached, and he licked the matted, b.l.o.o.d.y fur, grateful that the gouge wasn't gut-deep. His metal wings had borne the worst of it.

The very worst.

A deadweight on his shoulders, snapped pivots and shredded canvas, groaning as he moved. The harness and frame had protected him from the blindside, at least-if he'd been mere flesh and bone, he would never have had the opportunity to fight back, to give as hard as he'd received, rending and tearing, knuckle-deep, locked together with his foe and plummeting from the sky. But in the aftermath, the wreckage of his false wings was a handicap, a twisted snarl hampering movement, bereft of any former synthetic grace.

He was weak. Hungry. The island around him was barren stone, jet-black and cruel, as if Susano- had seized a fistful of obsidian and squeezed. A strange spire of coiled metal rose at the promontory, twelve feet high, twin lengths of thick iron cable connected to its core and trailing out over thras.h.i.+ng water.

And off in the distance, Buruu could smell him: the other male, crashed onto the same outcropping as he, torn from rib cage to haunches by his hind claws. Dying? Vengeful? Or yet overcome with l.u.s.t for the prize?

The female's scent still clouded Buruu's senses, now tempered by pain and the stink of his own blood. And amidst the rolling dark and howling rain and copper tang in his mouth, one thought swam above the mud of pheromones and endorphins. One thought to make his chest ache more fiercely than any wound from beak or claw.

The thought that he had lost himself again.

The thought that he had failed her.

Just like he had failed them.

YUKIKO?.

"Buruu!"

Yukiko shouted his name, lurching upright in the cot, pulled up short by the leather bindings at her wrists. For a second she thought she was back in the Iis.h.i.+; wondered at the salt in the air, the absence of wisteria and mountain wind. And then she recalled where she was, the shape of him in her dream, feeling a flood of relief so deep she almost burst into tears.

He's still alive.

She stretched out the Kenning, straining to her limits, heedless of the pain and growing nausea in her belly. She felt Red's small warm glow, dimmed near to nothing in slumber. The gaijin around her, like a storm of fireflies. Far in the distance, she felt the heat and shape of the female aras.h.i.+tora wheeling amongst the thunderclaps, glowing in her mind like fireworks. She could feel cold flickering beneath her, the sheen of scales under the water, eons deep. But out on the edges, she found a newly awakened heat, so distant it was simply a blur, almost too soft to see. And yet she knew it all the same.

Yukiko pushed her voice out into the black, screaming as loud as she could.

Buruu!

No answer. No flicker of acknowledgement. She whispered a prayer to Kitsune, begging for the Nine-Tailed Fox's fortune. s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her eyes shut, she reached down inside herself, heart straining, tearing away her wall to expose herself utterly, pain arcing at the base of her skull and crackling toward her temples. Something warm and sticky dripped from her nostrils, painted her lips in salt.

h.e.l.lo?

Nothing save the rolling black, the empty, howling wind.

h.e.l.lo?

-YKAI-KIN. YOU YET LIVE.- The female's voice was small, fragmented, as if she were shouting over some great distance into barking, snapping wind. Yukiko sighed, felt relief threatening to spill over once more into grateful tears.

I'm alive, yes.

-STRONG SWIMMER.- I need your help.

-WITH?- My friend. The aras.h.i.+tora I came here with. He's hurt. Can you help him?

-WOULD HELP HIM WHY?- He's aras.h.i.+tora like you. One of the last ones left. You can't just let him die!

-WRONG.- Please!

-CAME HERE TO AVOID MOTHERHOOD. NOT CODDLE A FULL GROWN LIKE A NEWBORN CUB.- You came out here so no one could mate with you?

-NEVER AGAIN, MONKEY-CHILD.- The female's mind burned with impossible heat.

-NEVER AGAIN.- Well, you didn't come far enough. Buruu could smell you days' away.

-WIND BLOWS SOUTH HERE. TRUE ARAs.h.i.+TORA DO NOT FLY SOUTH.- What about the other male? He must have smelled you too?

-SO?- So why did he attack us?

Laughter in her mind.

-HE IS MALE, MONKEY-CHILD.- Well, my friend is hurt now. He can't fly and can't hunt.

-AND?- And I'm asking you to help him. Please.

-NO.- Why not?

-WILL NOT AID THE KINSLAYER.- His name is Buruu.

-HE HAS FORSAKEN ANY RIGHT TO A NAME, YKAI-KIN.- ... You know him?

-BETTER THAN YOU.- The contact broke; a bullwhip crack that left a searing trail of pain across her brow. Yukiko winced, wiping her nose on her shoulder, smearing blood across her lips and chin. Her skull ached as if it had been stomped underfoot, ears ringing with a steel-toe tune. She felt absolutely awful-"Like an oni had s.h.i.+t in her head," her father would've said. And the thought of him washed over her in the dark, five days' worth of fatigue cras.h.i.+ng down with the weight of anvils, threatening to tip her over the precipice.

Don't you dare cry.

She thought of him on his slab. Ashes caked on his swollen face. She thought of his last words, bleeding out into her arms in the skies above Kigen. She searched for the rage but could find none, tears welling instead, clotting her lashes, and she screwed her eyes shut as if she could stop them spilling over.

She reached out on instinct for Buruu; a reflex action, like she'd reach for a handhold if she felt herself falling. But there was almost nothing waiting for her; just a tiny blob of muddy heat in the cold, vast dark where he used to be, laced with the hunger of reptiles. And that was the last push that sent her sailing over the edge.

She curled up in the dark, like a child in womb's black.

And she wept.

The smell of warm porridge and hot tea roused her from dreams of growling wind, and she woke to find the noise was the hunger in her own belly. Dim daylight shone beyond the tiny window, smeared storm-gray. Piotr was sitting beside the bed, metal tray on his lap, watching her intently with his one good eye.

As she blinked the grit from her lashes, he said something in his rolling, guttural language and reached over, pulling her uwagi up around her shoulders, covering her naked chest. She flinched away, cheeks burning, remembering the blinding outrage she'd felt as he pulled the tunic open, exposing her tattoo and all else besides.

What the h.e.l.ls was so important about the ink on my skin?

Piotr smoothed the tangle of hair from her face, offered a spoonful of porridge. As much as the way he looked at her was unsettling, the memory of her indignities still smoldering in her mind, the food smelled delicious. Her empty stomach murmured, and she swallowed her pride along with the first mouthful, wolfing down everything he gave her.

When she was finished, she tugged the bindings on her wrists and ankles, looked at them pointedly.

"Can you untie me?"