Daichi put one hand to his mouth and coughed. Licked his teeth and spat. Hand pressed to tortured ribs, more bruise than skin beneath the bandages. Every breath was fire. Every word a trial. His speech to the Kage had taken almost everything he had.
They were settled on the upper floor of a town house with a perfect view of the Shogun’s palace, waiting for the tigers to leave their den. Ayane knelt at a small table, head tilted, listening to the chatter of the mechabacus in her head. The device hung around her neck, plugged into the jack at her collarbone, the beads chittering back and forth across her breast. Dirt still clung in the crevices, fingerprints of rust on the faceplate from its slumber beneath damp earth, a slight scratch from the shovel used to dig it free. She would lean close to the boy beside her, lips brushing his ear, and Kin would relay the incoming data about troop movements, numbers, disposition to the Kage in the field via the shortwave transmitter on the table before him. There was intimacy to the pair, kneeling so close they almost touched—a kind of symbiosis Daichi found unsettling.
He could hear bells ringing, heavy feet, shouted orders. A cadre of Guild mercenaries spilled from the chapterhouse and stormed east over the Shiroi bridge, dozens more heading south to bolster the refinery defenses. Firelight gleamed on their night-filter goggles and bulbous helms, like a hundred scarab beetles ready for war. Bushimen were taking position on the bridges, motor-rickshaws roaring through the streets, Iron Samurai mustering in the palace grounds. The fire spread across Docktown as the timber boardwalk caught and burned, cutting off access to most of the dry-docked Tiger fleet. Daichi smiled up at the black storm clouds overhead and whispered a prayer to Susano-o, begging the Storm God to show his blessing to Lord Hiro’s wedding and withhold the rain for just one more day.
“It’s incredible,” Isao whispered.
The boy stood near the window, face lit with the flames, watching in awe as Kigen’s peaceful facade began to blacken and curl.
“The music of chaos,” Daichi said. “From a distance, it is beautiful. But consider for a moment how it would appear to an ordinary man down there in the street. Drenched in the sound of flame. Of fear. For yourself and the ones you love.”
He looked at the boy.
“Take no pride in this discord we now sow. It is an easy thing, to destroy. Be proud of the world you build after this is done.”
The old man coughed then, a long, wracking spasm that bent him double, one hand over his mouth, the other on his belly. His face twisted with the ache of it, teeth gritted, finally spitting black and viscous onto the boards beneath their feet. He wiped one hand across his mouth, turning his knuckles the color of burnt oil. Isao placed a hand on his shoulder, expression pained.
“You should head outside and keep … watch with Atsushi and Takeshi. We will signal the strike on the palace after … the refinery is ablaze.”
“Hai.” The boy nodded, covered his fist and stole down the stairwell.
Daichi turned to the pair who remained behind. The girl watching him, nervous hands and sunken eyes, machine chattering on her chest. Kin beside her, head down, stare locked with his. The boy looked old, worn thin, the skin on his bones almost translucent. Expressionless.
“Can you … feel it, Kin-san?”
“I feel it,” the boy replied.
Daichi turned back to the window, to the fire burning beyond the glass. He coughed once, hand over his mouth, watching the dancing flames.
“It has begun,” he said.
The Kage dropped like falling leaves into the alley, flitted down cracking cobbles without a sound. Each wore black, only their eyes showing between cloth folds, straight-edged swords upon their backs. Kaori led them onto the levee, crouched low, eyes on the stone bridge crossing the river fifty feet away. Behind her crouched a lieutenant of the local cell; a thin, pock-faced man known as the Spider, who moved like wisps of clouds across moonlight.
The waters of the Junsei river were thick as mud, jet-black, reeking of excrement and caustic salt. Twelve shadows slid down the concrete bank and waded into the flow, quietly as they might. The sounds of flames and bells and marching boots masked the splashing and cursing, the smell growing so bad one man was forced to stop and tread water while he vomited.
They made the southern shore, crawled along the waterline until they reached the refinery outflow pipe; a four-foot-wide tunnel barred by a corroded iron grille. Reeking effluent dribbled between its rusted teeth. Kaori crouched at the tunnel mouth, drew a hacksaw and set to work on the corroded spot-welds. The Spider and the others gathered about her, crouched low, eyes never leaving the bushimen on the bridge.
Two dozen children were gathered on the northern banks, hurling stones and bottles at the guards. Kaori recognized the leader; a girl with the handle of Butcher, her shrill voice ringing across the water, rife with profanities that would make a cloudwalker gasp. She smiled, despite herself.
A sky-ship thundered overhead, the blast from its prop-blades whipping ash into her eyes. Speakers mounted on the ship’s flank bellowed a warning for all law-abiding citizens to return to their homes, bright spotlights aimed at the gaggle of dissent near the footbridge. The children turned their rocks and bottles on the sky. Phoenix corvettes buzzed and dodged, letting off a few warning bursts of shuriken-thrower fire.
On a quieter night, the saw blade’s rasp would have brought every bushiman in the city running, but it was lost beneath the engine’s din. Kaori pulled a corroded bar away from the crosspiece, the space just narrow enough to squeeze through. She motioned the others forward, and one by one, the Kage wriggled through the gap, down into near-darkness and a deathly chemical reek. Kaori found herself alone on the bank, slipping her wakizashi off her back and sparing one last glance to the clouds above. Rolling black, illuminated with thick fingers of firelight and floodlights from the shouting sky-ships.
She could smell it on the wind above the river’s stench; the faint perfume of smoking timber and spice, the sharp tang of chi burning in the Docktown warehouses, spitting from the power units of the Iron Samurai marching to defend them.
The music of chaos.
Smiling, she turned and crawled into the black.
47
CRESCENDO
In years to come, Hana would remember the night the Kage attacked Kigen city as one of the darkest in her life. Not the worst. Not by far. But dark enough to leave a scar that would never truly heal.
There she stood, just at the beginning of it, unaware of what lay coiled and waiting in the hours ahead. She could hear the crowds outside their apartment walls, the clash of steel, the war-drum rhythm of running feet. Yoshi was crouched in a corner, iron-thrower in hand. She hovered by the window, peering into the charcoal haze, the flickering glow of growing flames reflected on the goggles strapped across her brow.
Sick with fear. Hands shaking. Somehow, some tiny part of her sensing the tremors of the incoming hurt. And as the dread rose up inside her, a slick, ice-cold bellyful, so too did the memory. Just like always.
The pain of it. The taste of it. In a life full of awful, crushing days, the yardstick by which all days would be measured.
The Worst Day of Her Life.
