The Lotus War - Kinslayer Part 41

"You and all your kind are poison."

And there in the flickering lantern light, in the shadowed guts of that machine, he saw it. The answer that had been in front of him the entire time, coming upon him so suddenly it stole his breath away. A shuddering intake of cold air into bruised lungs, a picture so clear he could almost reach out and touch it. The awful truth, as hard and real as the metal in his hands.

Inescapable.

Undeniable.

They will never let me know a moment's peace here.

The wrench fell from nerveless fingers, clattering upon iron a thousand miles away, the noise as distant as Father Moon and his feeble light.

They will never let me be.

And without a sound, he descended and shuffled back into the darkness.

He'd closed the door when he left her. And now it stood ajar.

A cold lump of fear in his throat, squeezing his windpipe shut as he hobbled onto the landing outside Yukiko's room, close enough now to hear quiet sobbing. He pushed through the door and saw her curled up in the far corner, and the first thing he noticed wasn't that her clothes were torn, how she flinched at his footsteps like some beaten dog, how she kicked at the floor with her heels in some vain attempt to push herself farther back into the corner. It was the way the blood on her skin, on her face, between her legs, looked so dark it was almost black.

"First Bloom..." he whispered. "What have they done?"

She wailed in fear as he stepped closer. Bruises on her face, those bee-stung lips swollen further still, ugly purple around her wrists, across her thighs. And blood.

So little, and yet so very much blood.

"Ayane." One hand stretching into the s.p.a.ce between them. "Ayane, it's me."

He knelt beside her, ignoring the pain in his gut and ribs. And at the sound of his voice she latched on to him like a child, like a broken porcelain doll, and the sobs that shook her whole body traveled down through the floor, into the earth at the roots of ancient trees, and sent the whole structure shaking.

Another wail of terror spilled over b.l.o.o.d.y lips, her fingers digging into his skin as the room shuddered, empty bottles rattling upon the sill. Kin realized this was actually happening; the room was shaking, the island trembling in the grip of yet another earthquake. Dust drifted from the ceiling, dead leaves falling outside like a flurry of dry and curling snow.

He held her tight, palms pressed to bare and bloodied flesh. The sobbing wracked her, shook her; a cutting, bone-deep sound he prayed he would never hear again. As suddenly as it had begun to tremble, the world fell still. Still and quiet as the s.p.a.ce between seconds, the empty brink between one torment and the next.

"Who was it?" A hard whisper. "Who did this to you, Ayane?"

It was a long while before she caught her breath, faced pressed into his chest as her spider limbs closed around him like a flytrap plant, needle points dipped in blood.

"Isao..." A whispered curse. "Isao and ... the others."

He exhaled, vile and hateful. Her whole body shaking in silent sobs. Gasping through clenched teeth. Kin hung his head, closed his eyes.

How did it come to this?

"Let's just go, Kin." Her voice was cracked and broken, raw with tears, slurred behind swollen lips. "Let's just leave, please. We don't belong here. We should never have come here, oh, please Kin..."

"Where would we go?" he asked, already knowing what she would say.

"Home." She squeezed so hard he couldn't breathe, pushed her face into his neck, skin slick and warm with tears. "We have to go home, Kin."

He held her tight and listened to her weep, staring at the black beyond the window gla.s.s. This place he thought he could belong. This place he had sought peace, and failed to find a single, solitary moment of it. His voice was an echo in the darkness, darker still.

"We'll go home."

He squeezed her tight as she sobbed in relief.

"But not without saying good-bye."

34.

THE JAGGED Sh.o.r.e.

The iron pulled him beneath the waves with half a breath in his lungs, dragging him down like an addict to the bottle's lip. Ilyitch clawed at the harness, fumbling in his gloves, wasting precious seconds to slough them off. He kicked at freezing water with leaden boots, the call of the waves above an all-too-distant roar. His fingers found purchase, iron buckles finally snapping loose. Twisting underwater, he shrugged the harness off his shoulders, watching it spiral away into the dark beneath his feet.

And then he saw them. Long ribbons of silver, snaking up through the depths below. Mouthfuls of needles, the kind of eyes that stared from children's closets in the dead of night. A stab of terror in his chest so sharp he actually screamed, wasting what was left of his breath, rus.h.i.+ng over his lips in a bubbling flurry. Hundreds of perfect spheres, gla.s.s-smooth, tumbling up, up, up toward the surface. With all the speed his panic could muster, he followed.

The silver shapes did the same.

Yukiko saw Ilyitch break the surface, sucking in a desperate lungful and spending it immediately in a terrified wail. He was fifteen feet from the ledge, struggling to keep his head above water and suck down breath enough to scream again.

Buruu's eyes were locked on the snarling nomad, circling to attack again, but he risked a quick, desperate glance as she kicked aside her oversized boots, sloughed off the rainskin. The rope was wrapped around her waist, the knot looped through copper coils as tight as she could make it.

YOU CANNOT DO THIS.

He did the same for me!

I WILL NOT LET- He saved my life, Buruu! When you couldn't even hear me screaming for help. I'd have drowned if not for him.

Without looking over her shoulder, Yukiko dove arrow-straight into the seething black. She could feel them in the water around her, spiraling upward in broad, lazy circles, nowhere for their prey to run. Gleaming and slick, eyes of slitted gold, ribbon fins along their flanks and spines undulating in the water at the whim of the thras.h.i.+ng swell.

Forked tongues and razors.

She struggled through the waves, barely able to swim herself. But her dive had taken her most of the way, and a cras.h.i.+ng wave got her close enough to throw her arms about Ilyitch's neck before he sank again. Buruu glanced over his shoulder, roared a warning as a long, serpentine head broke the surface, slowly rising from the water just five feet away. It moved like a cobra, rearing back and spreading the fins at its throat in a broad, s.h.i.+vering fan, dripping salt water and venom. A long, chattering hiss spilled from its needle-lined maw.

BEHIND!.

A second dragon rose from the depths, echoing its cousin's rasp, cutting off retreat. A third dorsal fin sliced in a broad arc around them, all spines and scales and long, smooth lines. Buruu gathered himself on the jagged sh.o.r.e, ready to dive into the waves and stain the ocean a deeper red. But the nomad crashed onto him from behind, the pair falling into a snarling, screaming heap, clumsy as children fighting over a new toy. Buruu bellowed with rage, las.h.i.+ng out with all his strength, tearing and biting in a desperate attempt to break loose from the nomad's grasp. Knowing he was too far away to help. That it was already too late.

NO! YUKIKO!.

Six cold reptilian eyes peered down at Yukiko and Ilyitch, angry hisses spilling through bared fangs. Thunder rocked the heavens, wind shrieking like a wounded oni. Ilyitch closed his eyes, muttering what sounded like a prayer, struggling to remain above the rolling, cras.h.i.+ng swell. A blinding arc of lightning reached out across the sky. The largest dragon snarled and swayed, spines at its throat rattling, drawing back and opening its jaws for the death strike.

And Yukiko held up her hand.

Water sparkled on her skin; tiny droplets pooling along the underside of each fingertip before falling back into the ocean around them. The storm held its breath. The rain became a hushed whisper between loving cloud and gentle earth, Raijin stilling his drums with broad, flat hands, time crawling upon its belly for the sheer wonder of it all.

And the sea dragons fell still.

Breath hissing in the caverns of their lungs, venom dripping between translucent katana teeth. They narrowed their eyes, heads tilted, leaning so close she could smell the poison and salt upon their breath, see tiny silver shards amongst the smooth gold in their eyes. They watched her watching them. And they wondered.

Ilyitch clutched the rope connecting Yukiko to the lightning tower. Wrapping his legs around the girl's waist, he hauled them both toward the sh.o.r.e, desperate, half-mad with fear. The dragons watched them go, snakes before the charmer, swaying to the ocean's pulse and the music of her mind. Ilyitch reached the island, bellowed at Yukiko. The girl slung her arm about his neck, one hand still extended toward the dragons, staring at them through half-closed eyes. Towering waves crashed against them, battering them on the stone, threatening to drag them down into cold and empty black. And with her holding tight, Ilyitch climbed the sodden rope, teeth gritted, muscle and tendon stretched to tearing, dragging them both from the sea.

The aras.h.i.+tora were still locked together in a screaming, tumbling frenzy. Buruu managed to finally break loose, kicking the younger thunder tiger away with his hind legs. The nomad rolled backward, landing skull first upon shattered stone. Buruu was on his feet in an instant, pounding back toward the island's rim, eyes alight with panic. He saw Yukiko's rope taut with weight, sawing across razored shale, coming apart strand by strand.

Two tons of blindside crashed against his ribs, spinning him up onto a sharp outcropping. Shards splintered in the impact, iridescent metal screeching beneath his furious roar. The nomad was on him in a blink, foot planted on his wing. Beak descending toward his exposed throat, shrieking like an oni fresh from the gates of the Nine h.e.l.ls.

"Stop!"

Yukiko's roar was louder than the storm above, echoing like thunder. The nomad froze, turned to the girl with a snarl. She lowered her chin, eyes narrowed, dripping floods of seawater onto the stone.

"Don't you touch him."

She spoke with lips and teeth and tongue, but her words echoed down the Kenning, swimming in their thoughts as burning, living things. Her hair was a smooth sheet of black draped over one half of her face, single eye glaring between closing curtains. The rain fell upon her skin as if she were stone, trickling down her cheek and beading in her lashes. Stepping forward, the boy splayed and coughing on the rocks behind her, she held up one b.l.o.o.d.y hand, the other curled into a fist. Trembling, pale and rigid, teeth clenched, a spray of rain from bloodless lips accompanying every word.

"Do you know what I am?"

The force of her bore down on the nomad like deep summer and a noonday sun. Raijin bent double and pounded his drums as if the world itself were ending. The Kenning fairly rippled with the heat of her, voice resounding in the umbra as she took another step forward. The nomad took one step back, cringing low to shattered stone, her words burning in his mind.

"I am a daughter of foxes. Slayer of Shguns. Ender of empires. The greatest tempest s.h.i.+ma has ever known waits in the wings for me to call its name, and its coming will shake her foundations like the drums of the Thunder G.o.d."

The clouds crashed above her, a halo of lightning playing in the sky over her head.

"I am a Stormdancer. And you will hear me now."

35.

CHILDREN OF THE GRAVE.

The door to the apartment burst open, Hana almost screaming in fright. Akihito loomed to his feet as Jurou dragged Yos.h.i.+ inside, kicked the door shut behind. Both boys were painted b.l.o.o.d.y, her brother leaning on Jurou's shoulder, his face agony-pale.

"G.o.ds, Yos.h.i.+!" Hana was on her feet, rus.h.i.+ng to his side, helping him to his pile of cus.h.i.+ons. "What happened?"

"Bar fight." Wincing, Yos.h.i.+ peeled back his b.l.o.o.d.y tunic and emptied a bottle of seppuku onto a vicious cut across his ribs. Hana tore off her kerchief, pressed it to the inch-deep slice, warm and sticky-slick beneath her fingers.

"A bar fight?"

Yos.h.i.+ nodded, tipping the last of the rice wine into his mouth. "Drunken beggar monk came at me with his prayer beads. Those things are b.l.o.o.d.y sharp..."

Hana pulled back, hands on her hips. "Yos.h.i.+, can you be serious for once in your G.o.dsd.a.m.ned life?"

"Now where's the sense in that?" He took a moment to catch his breath, looked her new outfit up and down, smiled crookedly. "You scrub up prettier than springtime, sister-mine."

Hana scowled at the flattery, fingers slick with Yos.h.i.+'s blood. She looked to Jurou, the boy obviously panicked, fresh scarlet on his hands, dark, dew-moist eyes wide with new fear. Akihito stood in the corner, silent as tombs, looking back and forth between the siblings. Finally, she turned to glare at Daken, curled atop his customary throne over the windowsill, unblinking.

"Someone tell me what the h.e.l.ls is going on..."

With no answers forthcoming, she reached out into the Kenning. Feeling amidst the local corpse-rats; a quick flight through a dozen sets of eyes within shouting distance of the tenement tower. And there in the distance ...

... the distance ...

.... a brood of six, gathered on the body of a dead beggar. Her siblings scattering like lotusflies at the sound of approaching boots. She looked up from her meat, glittering black eyes, fur and whiskers slick with blood. Squealing in anger.

Soldiers. Polarized goggles. Naked steel. And her belly wasn't even full.

A split-toed boot descended toward her head ...

"The rats," Hana breathed. "Oh s.h.i.+t..."

She looked to Yos.h.i.+, his eyes losing focus, growing wide as they met hers.

"s.h.i.+t's about the size of it."

"There's at least a dozen..."

"Out back maybe. Look in front."

"What is it?" Jurou asked, glancing between the pair.

"Bus.h.i.+men." Yos.h.i.+ pulled himself to his feet, wincing in pain. "Lots of them."

"Who says they're after us?"

"You fixing to wait and find out?"

Daken slipped out through the tiny window, darting across the eaves below and crawling up a downspout onto the roof. Jurou disappeared into their bedroom, returning with four bulging satchels of what could only be coin slung over his shoulders. No time for questions-Hana grabbed Akihito by the hand, and the four were slipping out the door without a backward glance.

Yos.h.i.+ took the lead, b.l.o.o.d.y hand pressed to his side, the other on the iron-thrower at the small of his back. Jurou brought up the rear, Akihito second, Hana stumbling between them, eyelid fluttering as she rode Daken's sight. They avoided the stairwell, padding to the broad rice-paper window at the end of the hall. Yos.h.i.+ tugged at the swollen wood, and the window gave way with a rust-red groan, opening out onto the three-story drop between the ramshackle tenements. The sun's scarlet glare was sharp on the cobbles and gutter below, shockingly bright.

Hana crawled out first, clinging to a corroded downspout. She scrambled down spider-quick, Yos.h.i.+ close behind. Slinging one leg over the sill, Akihito hauled himself out of the window, grasping the pipe with hands as broad as dinner plates. He descended using only his upper-body strength, his good leg scrabbling against the brick. Jurou had more trouble, slipping and cursing his way down the spout, doubled over like a monkey and s.h.i.+mmying down the last twelve feet.

Yos.h.i.+ gave a soft wolf whistle, whispered up at the other boy.

"Fine view down here. But you might want to up with the hurry."