The siblings were hauled to their feet, Hana still flailing with nails and teeth and fists, Yoshi’s head lolling, nose and ears bleeding. She called his name, received no answer. Looking up, she saw a mangled silhouette peering over the ledge above. Stubby ears. Yellow eyes.
She felt the conflict within him, the desire to help overwhelmed by his fear, the certainty there was nothing he could actually do. One cat against half a dozen hardened thugs?
She felt him hovering as the Scorpion Children surrounded them. A sky-ship in Phoenix colors roared overhead, spraying the rooftop with shuriken fire. And then, heart sinking in her chest, she felt Daken running away. Over rooftops, away from the fire and smoke, soft as shadows. She screamed at him to stop, pleaded for help.
But he was gone.
The yakuza were a knot of inked muscle and curling, curdled faces. Hana looked up into the leader’s eyes. A thin, angled scowl, teeth like a trash pile, tetsubo in his hand.
“You killed Hida.”
He raised his club into the air.
“You’re going to wish it was the other way around, bitch.”
And down it came.
48
STILLNESS
Chaos ran through the Daimyo’s palace, and the nightingale floors sang in time with its tread. The smell of distant flames mixed with the cooking fires, entrees lying cold on the feast tables. Panic at the Kage attack was quickly replaced by outrage, vows of vengeance, drawn swords. And the Daimyo of the Tora clan led his Samurai out into the city, the Dragon Daimyo and his retinue falling into step behind these men with ash-streaked faces, these walking dead set once more like wolves amongst the flock on Kigen’s streets.
A legion, almost one hundred strong, marching from the palace gates. Every one clad in great lumbering suits of iron, spitting chi smoke into the air, flags flying high in a scorching wind, tinged with the reek of burning skin. Michi watched them from an upper window of the servants’ quarters, a grim smile on her face.
She stole amidst the corridors, down the servant’s passages, Ichizo’s package in her arms. Flitting through the abandoned kitchens, the cleaner’s rooms, then down into the generator room, oiled rags and tongues of flame. The hum of quiet panic, fear amongst the remaining nobility suppressed beneath a stoic facade, the mask of honor, the notion of “face.” It would be unseemly—indeed,
And then it began.
First, an explosion within the cellars, the Daimyo’s generators splitting asunder, setting the bottom floor of the eastern wing ablaze. Cries of terror from the dining hall, courtiers running through the corridors. A hastily assembled line of bushimen gathered, stretching from the garden stream to the cellar doors, dashing buckets full of cloudy water and the occasional unfortunate koi fish onto the swelling inferno.
Guests fled the feast. Tiny, hurried steps within the hems of their robes, fearful expressions hidden behind beautiful breathers and fluttering fans. The families of the Dragon clanlord retreated to the guest quarters, personal house guards barring the doors. But all too soon, they were screaming; screaming and fleeing as the bleached cedar tiles above their heads caught fire, choking smoke and burning embers dancing in the air.
Heavy boots, running feet, shouted orders, iron bells. Smoke drifting through the corridors, seeping under the doorway of the room she slipped back inside. And finally, Michi stepped into the hallway and walked toward the royal wing.
If the sight of the pristine girl and her scarlet gift box seemed strange, the bushimen dashing past appeared to have more pressing concerns. Michi made her way around the veranda, away from the bucket line and the still-blazing cellar. She yelled at a passing bushi’ brigade, telling them she saw rebels fleeing over the western walls, and they yelled thanks and charged away. Up the stairs, past the tearooms, the nightingale floor chirping beneath her sandals. Keeping her head bowed, eyes downturned from the guards who thundered past, crying for servants to bring water. The guest wing was a burning lotus field on a hot summer’s day.
She heard combat somewhere out in the city, steel upon steel, the heavy thunder of shuriken-thrower fire. The
“Halt!”
Four bushimen barred entry to the Daimyo’s wing, huge double doors locked at their backs. Banded black across their chests, iron helms and face guards, nagamaki naked in their hands. This hallway was wider than those of the servants’ wing; wide enough by far to wield the longblades. And for these men to have been stationed outside the Daimyo’s halls at all meant they were no strangers to the art of steel.
“You girl,” barked the commander. “What are you doing here?”
“I bring gifts,” she said, proffering the box in her hands.
“Gifts? What madness is this? Who are you?”
“Michi-san,” said another guard. “I recognize her. She used to serve First Daughter.”
The bushiman commander stepped forward. “No one is to see your mistress, Lady Michi. By orders of the Daimyo. Best to head downstairs and help with—”
She reached into the box and drew them out, scarlet card falling to the floor. Four and three feet long, gentle curves and glittering saw-blade teeth. She thumbed the ignitions on the hilts and the motors roared to life, vibration traveling up her arms and into her chest, bringing a small smile to painted lips.
Michi gunned the throttles of Ichizo’s chainkatana and wakizashi. Tearing away the intact layer of her junihitoe gown, she stepped out of her wooden sandals, wriggling her feet in split-toed socks. She took up her stance, flourishing the blades about her waist and head, a twirling, snarling dance of folded steel.
The commander looked incredulous. Several of the bushimen behind exchanged amused glances, wry smiles and short bursts of baffled laughter.
“Put those down before you hurt yourself, girl,” the commander said.
Michi dashed across the floorboards, narrowed eyes and gleaming teeth. The commander came to his senses first and stepped forward, bringing his nagamaki into some semblance of guard. She slipped down onto her knees, fine Kitsune silk and her momentum sending her into a skid across polished boards, blade passing harmlessly over her head. Cutting the commander’s legs out from under him, a blinding spray of red, a shriek of agony as the chainsaw blades sheared through bone like butter. Spinning up to her feet, katana cleaving through another bushiman’s forearm, wakizashi parrying a hasty thrust from a third as the soldiers at last registered the threat. Sparks in the air as steel crashed, the girl moving like smoke between the blades, swaying to the music she made.
A blade to a throat. A crimson spray on the walls. A parry. A wheel-kick. A thrust. Red mist in the air. Heart thundering in her chest.
Then stillness.
