The Lotus War - Kinslayer Part 36

"It's getting worse." Hiro glanced at the Guildsman beside him. "So much worse."

Second Bloom Kensai refused to look down, b.l.o.o.d.y eyes fixed on the proving grounds ahead. The rising sun kissed his perfect, metal cheek, the smooth features of a gilded youth retching up breather cables, his hulking atmos-suit spitting fumes and hissing with every breath. A child's head atop a monster's body.

"All will be well once inochi supplies are restored." Kensai's voice rumbled in Hiro's gut. "But now you see why the war must be renewed. We need more prisoners, Shgun. More gaijin to feed the lotus. And more land to plant it."

Hiro frowned, his mind turning to dark places. "Is there no other way? Some other-"

"No." Kensai folded his arms. "Sacrifices must be made. The lotus must bloom."

"It troubles me to think-"

"Nature knows not of mercy. The blood of the meek slakes the conqueror's thirst. This is not a law unique to the Guild. This is the way of all things, Shgun."

"Do not call me that."

"And why not?"

"Because I am not Shgun. Just because two clanlords have deigned to attend my wedding, does not guarantee they will swear allegiance."

"They will kneel before you, young Lord. All of them."

"And if not? How will the clans fight the Kage or the gaijin if we spend our strength fighting each other? You wish to craft me a throne of my countrymen's bones?"

"You need not fight the other clans, Shgun. All they require is a rallying point. A banner grand and terrifying enough to stand behind."

Kensai pointed into the distance.

"And so we give it to you."

Hiro looked at the proving grounds, coalescing out of the ashen haze ahead. Forges and smelting plants rising like blood blisters behind a barbed-wire forest, wreathed in smoke. Trains rolling on rusted tracks, hauling iron and coal from the Midland mines, broad roads of black gravel, dotted by watchtowers. The grounds swarmed with activity; atmos-suits moving to and fro, a hundred cutting torches twinkling like stars in the long-lost sky. Row upon row of armored machines, like soldiers at muster, fifteen feet high even in repose, scythe arms ending in sawtoothed chainblades. Four legs apiece, each one thick as tree trunks, skin gleaming yellow in the light of the scorching sun. Hundreds of them.

Hiro raised his eyebrows.

"Shreddermen suits?"

"The Kage feather their nests in the Iis.h.i.+ forest," Kensai said. "So we will leave no forest standing in our wake."

Hiro squinted through the pall to the far end of the grounds; gantries and walkways built around a towering shadow. Cutting torches arced and spat, Lotusmen trailed bright blue flames around the hulking figure, rocket packs blazing. The Guildsmen were insects beside it-some vast sleeping giant, nodding off in a sea of mosquitoes, too enormous to feel their sting. Three hundred feet high, eight legs curled up beneath its bloated metal belly like a waiting spider. Saw-blade arms with teeth big as men, pistons tall as houses, great chimney stacks running down its spine and piercing the sky like blades. The sound of its engines was a choir of earthquakes.

A machine. A colossus. A behemoth of black iron and blacker smoke.

Hiro stared in wonder. "What in the name of the G.o.ds..."

"Look now upon the doom of the Kage."

Hiro wiped the ash from his goggles, stared at the metal giant. It was beyond anything he'd dreamed. A looming, rumbling, cast-iron impossibility.

"The Shadows have their standard bearer," Kensai continued. "Now we have ours. Our creation will be the rallying cry to unite the zaibatsu. Dragon, Phoenix, Fox: none are foolish enough to field an army against such a machine. They will fall into line, one after another, with you at their head. And you will lead them into the Iis.h.i.+, and level every tree, crush every stone, until there are no more holes for the rebels to hide inside. You will avenge your Lord and restore your honor. You will kill the Impure one and the fools who follow her."

Hiro licked his lips, tasted chi smoke. Adrenaline sour in the back of his throat. He struggled to swallow.

"It's incredible."

"It will be ready to march within weeks. All of s.h.i.+ma will tremble at its approach. You will march in the vanguard, that the other Daimyo will have no illusions about where the Guild's allegiance lies. We will end this petty civil war and set the clan armies to task. The Kage must be eliminated. And that Impure abomination must burn."

Behind that perfect mask, Hiro could hear the smile in Kensai's voice.

"And you said you did not enjoy surprises." He bowed, hand over fist. "Shgun."

Hiro looked at the towering colossus of iron and smoke. He closed his eyes, inhaled the fumes, savored the taste on his teeth and tongue. He could feel the fingers on his missing hand itching, the iron arm they'd given him trembling in sympathy. A phantom reminder of all she'd taken from him. The promise of everything he would take from her.

"Does it have a name?" he asked.

"Of course."

Kensai spread his arms wide.

"Behold the Earthcrusher."

The ground was a sea of ashes wreathed in blackened fumes. Every step raised a cloud of vapor, swirling about their ankles and hanging from their shoulders like shrouds. Dawn struggled to pierce the haze; sickly, vomit-gray, the air cold as winter snow. They were somewhere east of the Guild bastion of First House, miles deep into the plains where the first production-grade lotus crops had been grown, centuries ago, the earth ruined beyond repair.

Ryusaki knew now why this place was called "the Stain."

The Kage captain's breather was choked and useless, the device like a stone about his face. The internal mechanism had failed yesterday, and only the filter scrims kept the deadly fumes at bay now. He felt dirtier than he could ever remember; like he'd taken a bath in fresh sewage and dried off by rolling in rotting corpses. Every breath was a black ache, eyes sc.u.mmed with charcoal tears behind his goggles, throat parched, lips cracking. But he dared not remove the breather to drink, not even for a second. Not even for a mouthful.

He knew the Guild had built their factory here in the Stain for that very reason-an aerial approach would be intercepted by ironclads, the roads and rail lines were a bottleneck, always watched, and an approach overland through the deadlands was virtual suicide. The soldier in him had to admire the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

"How you faring, boys?"

Ryusaki looked back at his fellow Kage and saw s.h.i.+ntaro and Jun both looked like h.e.l.l. Faces hidden beneath breathers and goggles, swathed head to foot, heavy gloves and boots, tied off at the hemlines. But their postures showed both were feeling the effects of the deadlands just as much as Ryusaki was. Jun in particular was doing it hard-he'd puked into his breather last night and had to take the mask off to clean it, sucking down a few lungfuls of fumes. His eyes were so bloodshot, Ryusaki could almost see them glowing behind his goggles.

A weary thumbs-up from s.h.i.+ntaro was all he got, so he turned and slogged on, earth crumbling beneath his weight as if the surface was a rotten, hollowed sh.e.l.l. Deep footprints marked their trail from the northern rail lines; the trio had stowed away on a freight train loaded with iron, hitching as close to the staging grounds as they dared before leaping off into the deadlands the night before last.

One day and two nights in the h.e.l.ls ...

Daichi had asked for volunteers, and Ryusaki had known the risks when he stepped forward. But the message from the Kigen cell was clear: the Guild was building something in the Stain, and at this stage of the game, the Kage couldn't afford to be blind. If the Stormdancer had returned, the council could have used her eyes. As it was, they had to do it the hard way. The way they'd been doing it for years before the girl arrived on her thunder tiger.

Suited Ryusaki just fine.

The three Kage trudged through the wasteland, following sky-s.h.i.+p exhaust trails. Chill winds howled across the desolate plains but utterly failed to stir the vapor: the fumes clung to the soil like a toddler to its mother's kimono. The rents in the earth were worse than he'd ever seen; some stretching ten feet deep, and the trio was forced to climb down into the fissures if they proved too wide to leap across. The vapor hung heavy within these cracks; a tar-thick, sticky smog, deathly cold, choking daylight utterly. In the deepest of them, he swore he could hear a voice, lilting and sweet, whispering just beyond the edge of understanding.

A woman's voice ...

They marched on, one shuffling step at a time, until his feet bled and his legs trembled. At last Jun could walk no more, sinking to his knees. He retched again into his breather, black and vile, filling the eyeholes. And Ryusaki was forced to watch, helpless, as the young man tore his mask away and puked again; a gurgling fountain of gray and scarlet, slumping face-first into the corrupted earth.

His eyes had turned black.

Twenty-two years old.

They whispered a prayer to Enma-, begging the Great Judge to weigh the boy fair. They had no offerings, no wooden coin or incense to burn for him. Looking at the deadland ashes already caked on the boy's face, Ryusaki hoped they would be enough to grant his soul a hearing at the Court of h.e.l.ls. The entire countryside had been burned to produce them, after all. That should be offering enough for any judge.

Miles. Hours. Fumes so thick his vision swam, head buzzing, the taste of death chalked on his tongue. s.h.i.+ntaro stumbled behind him, fell under the weight of his pack, and Ryusaki dragged him upright and slapped his back, promising a decent cup of Danroan sake when they returned to civilization. The boy was nearly delirious, but he nodded and kept walking, shoulders slumped, like a man on his way to the executioner's scaffold.

They crested a small hill near dusk. And across the sea of fumes, they saw it.

The Guild staging grounds.

Ironclads hanging in the air like bloated lotusflies. Walls of razor wire, halogen lamps and cutting torches burning as Lady Amaterasu slipped toward her rest. Ryusaki fumbled with the spygla.s.s at his belt, thumbed the ash from the lenses, cursing beneath his breath as he held it to his eye. Squinting into the Guild compound, blinking black tears, he caught sight of hulking machines lined up in formation, close to a hundred in all. Four legged, brittle-yellow, chainsaw blades for hands. It took a few moments to realize they were shreddermen suits.

Why would the Guild need a legion of those?

He hissed through gritted teeth as realization dawned.

To cut a forest down ...

He shook his head, started to turn away when he spotted it. Just a glimpse; a shadow within shadows, something vast and black lurking amidst the smog. But then Lady Sun hit the horizon, flaring bright as she laid down to sleep, and he saw it; a kettle-bellied, sawtoothed colossus with smokestack spines and the legs of some vast, iron spider. A machine the likes of which he had never seen.

"Raijin's drums, what is that?" he breathed.

s.h.i.+ntaro slumped down in the ash, staring at his hand as if amazed he owned a set of fingers. Ryusaki coughed, tasting black on his tongue. Unbuckling s.h.i.+ntaro's pack, he pulled aside its oilskin, revealing the graceless bulk of a wireless transmitter. He cranked the handle, but the machine made a sound like a meat grinder, refusing to register power.

"s.h.i.+t." Ryusaki thumped the radio as s.h.i.+ntaro keeled over beside him, gasping like a landed fish. "Come on, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, work..."

If it heard him, the transmitter made no effort to obey.

He could feel a sickness in his belly that had nothing to do with fear. An ashen, blackened nausea, creeping into his bones, up toward his heart. He could feel it inside him. Death taken root. Fear beside it. But not here. Not yet.

Ryusaki lurched to his feet, cut loose his own gear and slung the transmitter's weight across his back. s.h.i.+ntaro was spasming, black foam filling his breather, and Ryusaki knelt long enough to give him a blade to the heart. Better to die quick. Better not to suffer.

Not like he was going to.

The Kage captain drew a ragged breath, adjusted the transmitter on his back and turned north, toward the rail lines. He had to get far enough from the smog that the device might work, send a message to the closest listening post, on again, until it reached the Iis.h.i.+. Because Ryusaki knew now he never would.

Never see those mountains again, hear the windsong in the trees, watch flowers bloom in a blessed spring. Never see his brother again. Never again be scolded by his mother for not eating right or cursing too much. Never to see this war end.

He closed his eyes, willed away the grief, the fear, the despair. Not a second to waste on any of it. Because he refused to die for nothing. To allow s.h.i.+ntaro and Jun to have died for nothing. This news would reach the Iis.h.i.+, even if it killed him.

Head bowed, fighting for every breath, Ryusaki began trekking north.

Even if it killed him.

30.

A MOMENT OF EMPTY.

Even though he'd broken the lock on her cell, Ayane had insisted she return to her prison after seeing to Daichi's wounds. Quietly closing the door behind her and sitting in the dark to wait, despite all of Kin's protests. She said she wanted permission before she would leave her cage again. Validation. Vindication. Finally given by an old man with bruised and ragged breath, awakening yestereve from a sleep that would have become death, if not for the accursed lotusgirl and her gleaming spider limbs.

Freedom at last.

Ayane stepped from the cell and threw her arms around his neck, her smile as wide as the sky. She smelled of sweat, damp cotton, dried blood. Kin gave a weak hug in return, waiting for her to release him. Her arms slipped away from his shoulders reluctantly, and she stepped back to look him over with those dark, liquid eyes, skin as pale as moonlight.

"Kin-san, what's wrong?"

"... Nothing."

"First Bloom, you could not lie a little harder, could you?" A wry smile. "That way I could at least try to believe you."

"Why do you still do that?"

"Do what?"

"Swear by the First Bloom. You're not Guild anymore."

"Old habit?" The girl shrugged, silver limbs rippling on her back.

"It makes you stand out. Reminds people who you used to be. Daichi agreed to release you because you saved his life. But the less they think of you as Guild, the better."

"Then who should I swear by? Thunder G.o.ds and their drums? Maybe the Maker and his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es?" She adopted a gruff voice, slapped a mock frown onto her face. "Izanagi's bawwwwls."

Kin smiled despite himself. "You do that very well."

"My thanks, my Lord." The girl bowed from the knees, like a lady of court. "Now, will you tell me what troubles you, or should we pretend you are a halfway decent liar and have you show me the bathhouse instead?"

"Just ... all of it," he shrugged. "The 'thrower malfunction. Daichi nearly dying. They think it's my fault. Everything has gone to h.e.l.l since Yukiko and Buruu left." A sigh. "And they should be back by now."

The words sounded as though someone else were speaking them. Someone in a distant room, indulging in idle gossip, too foolish to even contemplate.

Yukiko missing? Nonsense. The last time he'd seen her, they'd had a screaming fight. Fate would never be so cruel as to take her away without giving him a chance to- "You are worried about her," Ayane said.

He stared at the floor. Nodded.

"I am certain she is all right, Kin. Wherever she is. She is the Stormdancer. She destroyed three ironclads without so much as a scratch. Killed a Shgun simply by looking at him."

Kin shook his head.

"That's not her. The way you all see her..." He sighed, rubbed the crease between his brow. "You don't know her at all."

Ayane touched his hand, fingertips as gentle as cobwebs across his skin. A frail smile bloomed on her lips.

"You are very sweet, you know, Kin-san. You always think the best of everyone."