hands into the air. Knees pressed together, hunched over, pleading eyes shining through splayed fingers.
“Don’t,” he begged. “Don’t…”
Hana rose from the ruins of the bed, cheek purpling, hair tangled about her eye, leather patch askew on her face. Half breathing, half sobbing, she limped to her brother’s side, holding her wrist, already bruised. Reaching out, she gently covered the barrel, pressed Yoshi’s aim to the floor. He frowned at her as she took the ’thrower from his hands.
“Oh, thank you, girl,” the man said. “Amaterasu bless you—”
Hana turned and fired into the man’s crotch.
He dropped like a stone, screaming, clutching the bloody hole between his legs. Falling forward onto his face, he curled into a ball and screamed again; a high-pitched, vibrato wail that tore his throat raw. Hana kicked him onto his back, planted her foot on his chest and aimed the iron-thrower at his forehead. Daken prowled into the room, coiled around her leg. Her voice was a low-pitched growl.
“Who are you?”
“Gendo,” the man gasped. “Gendo!”
“I didn’t ask your name!” Hana yelled. “I asked who you were!”
“Scorpion Child.” The man pulled his uwagi off his shoulder, showed the dueling scorpions in the negative space between his tattoos. “Scorpion
“Yakuza?” Hana blinked. “I don’t—”
Yoshi pushed past her, knelt beside the man and grabbed a fistful of collar, hauling him up into a clenched fist. Skin mashed against teeth, bright red paint on the gangster’s mouth.
“How did you find us, bastard?” Yoshi spat.
And then Hana understood. Before he took another breath. Before another word escaped his lips. The piles of money, the late-night forays into the city, the wound on Yoshi’s ribs …
“Gods, Yoshi … You clipped the fucking yakuza?”
Yoshi punched the man again, grabbed a handful of bloody crotch and squeezed.
“How did you find us?” Yoshi roared.
And Gendo told them.
Jurou’s corpse was easier to look at than Yoshi’s grief.
Tiny, bloody footprints and the bodies of poisoned rats on the cobbles all around it, shadows dancing in the light of Docktown flames. The earth trembled beneath them, an explosion lighting southern skies. Hana stared at the body and felt her stomach turn, the urge to look away almost overpowering. The pallor of its skin. The missing toes and fingers and teeth.
“Oh, gods,” she breathed. “Jurou…”
Yoshi fell to his knees, hands over his mouth. Shapeless, gibbering grief spilled between his fingers, rocking back and forth, knees grinding into bloody dirt, tearing his hair and screwing his eyes shut. Spit and snot, gritted teeth and choking sobs, hands clenched into fists.
“Bastards.” He hugged himself and moaned. “Oh, you mother
“Yoshi, we have to go.”
“Hana, look what they did to him…”
“I know.” She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, heart aching. “But there are bushi’ everywhere and the yakuza are still after us. We have to go.”
“Yoshi, get up!”
Hana hauled him to his feet, turned him away from Jurou’s remains. She heard shouts, running feet getting closer. She glimpsed vicious, dark faces at one end of the alley. Sky-ships roaring overhead. She grabbed Yoshi’s arm and ran.
She dragged her brother away, and he stumbled for the tears in his eyes and the weight in his chest. They tumbled from the alleyway into a blur of noise and color and motion. A crowd flooded the street, bright silks and expensive breathers, possessions bundled in their arms; the well-to-do citizenry of Upside fleeing toward the palace like rats from the flames. Smoke thick in the air, sky-ships thundering, loudspeakers demanding all citizens return to their homes.
They lunged into the mob, tried to blend into the rolling sea of grime and color. A motor-rickshaw sat in the middle of the street, blaring its horn. The driver finally broke, planted his foot, running down pedestrians in his hurry to escape.
Hana looked around at the mob, swelling and shifting about her. She could hear fighting down the way; truncheons and tetsubo and breaking glass. They were swept up in the current of flesh, Yoshi moving along in mute acquiescence, Hana’s arms wrapped around him.
Daken’s voice sang in her mind, tinged with mild anxiety.
She turned in the crowd and dragged Yoshi away, struggling against the riptide. A glance behind revealed nothing, but she could hear struggles, angry commands.
They reached a squeezeway between two lopsided buildings, breaking away from the crush and heat. A shouted curse, a glimpse of tattooed flesh behind. The press of crooked walls all around them, stink of rot and waste, struggling through the shin-high filth. Yoshi’s hand was slippery with perspiration and blood, and he stumbled along as if sleepwalking, dried tear tracks cutting through the dirt on his face.
“Come on, Yoshi,” she breathed. “Run.”
Pounding footsteps, the scrape of inked flesh against the walls behind. The pair belted out onto a narrow street lined with empty merchant stalls, knocking aside a group of gutter-waifs beating on an overturned Guild crier, the machine spinning its tank tracks and clanging its bells in alarm. A backward glance revealed crooked faces, inked flesh, blades flashing in clenched fists. At least a dozen yakuza chasing them now, closing fast.
Yoshi crashed into an abandoned peddler’s cart, old pots and children’s toys cascading into the street as it upended. He stumbled, Hana grabbing his arm, pulled him upright.
Daken bolted across the rooftops, a black shadow against the firelight glow. Corpse-rats squealed in the shadows, fleeing the growing mob, rising flames. Thunder rumbled overhead, mixing with the roar of sky-ship engines, spotlights cutting like lightning through the black.
Breath burning in their lungs, sweat in their eyes.
“Faster!” Hana grabbed her brother’s arm, dragging him along.
“I can’t!”
Two tattooed lumps of muscle appeared at the alley mouth. Murder lit their eyes, split their lips into greedy grins. Hana tore the iron-thrower from her pants without thinking and aimed at the bigger man’s face. She squeezed the trigger.
The weapon spat out a hollow, empty click.
A stout, brutish-looking man collided with her from behind, knocking the breath from her body. Hana screamed, clawing the man’s eyes with broken fingernails. Tattooed arms grabbed her in a bear hug as she drove her knee into his crotch. Yoshi was on his feet, clubbing the man with a piece of rusty pipe, roaring at the top of his lungs. Two more men crash-tackled him, brought him down amidst a flurry of profanity. Boots danced on his ribs, his face. He struck back with his feet, connecting with one man’s knee and inverting it. Snapping bone and bright, wide-eyed screaming. Blood. Kicks rained down on Yoshi’s head.
