“I felt it, Michi,” Aisha said. “I felt it when Yoritomo broke my neck.”
“No. That’s not true. It can’t be.”
“She got away?” Light flared in Aisha’s eyes, hot and desperate. “Yukiko? She and the thunder tiger escaped?”
“Hai,” Michi nodded, blinked back burning tears. “The people sing songs about her, Aisha. Arashi-no- odoriko, they call her.”
“Stormdancer,” Aisha breathed. “It was worth it, then.”
A gurgling intake of breath tore Michi’s eyes away, down to the Guildsman slumped against the wall. It held an armful of its own innards, spilling purple and wet from its torn gut, the sundered mechabacus coughing counting beads into its lap. Michi glanced from the Guildsman to the tubes in Aisha’s chest and arms. She snatched up her chainkatana, murder in her eyes.
The Guildsman looked up at her approach, wet breath rattling in its lungs. It keeled over, choking, clawing at its back. And with a sound like breaking eggshells, the silver orb on its spine split open, and a fist-sized metallic object tumbled out onto the floorboards.
Michi stepped back, fearing some kind of explosive. But the object unfurled eight tiny clockwork legs, stared at her with a red, glowing eye.
“They know,” Aisha whispered. “They know you are here. They will be coming.”
“Let them,” Michi hissed.
“I will not have you die for me.”
“Who said anything about—”
Michi heard it before she felt it; a distant rumble, as if a long-slumbering giant was yawning and stretching in his cradle beneath the earth. The ground trembled, the whole palace shaking, dust drifting from the eaves. Little Tomo yowled at the sky, hopped in small circles on the bedclothes. Michi ran to the bed and threw herself over Aisha, holding her tight as the palace shook on its foundations, windows cracking at the corners. She lay there until the earthquake died, trying not to notice the smell of metal and grease seeping from her mistress’s pores.
“The gods are angry,” Aisha breathed. “The reckoning comes.”
“Aisha, I have to get you out of here.”
“Will you carry me, Michi-chan? All by yourself?”
They heard a distant booming; heavy weight pounding against the iron-shod doors to the bedchambers. Shouted demands to open in the name of various clanlords. Tiger. Phoenix. Dragon.
“You cannot bring these machines, Michi.” Aisha was looking at her now, tears gone. “They are my lungs. They are my heart. Without them, I would have gone to the peace I earned long ago.”
“But I can’t just leave you here!”
“No.”
Aisha looked into her eyes, a small, sad smile on her face.
“No, you cannot.”
Michi blinked, lips parted as she tried to breathe. “You can’t ask me that…”
“I would do it myself.” A bitter smile. “But if I could wield the blade, there would be no call for its mercy.”
“Aisha, no…”
“No wedding. No Shogun.” Aisha licked at dry, cracked lips. “Do not leave me like this, love. They have picked over my bones enough. Dragged me from the quiet dark into wretched daylight. Show them I am theirs no longer, Michi. Tell them I am done.”
Michi couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see for the tears.
“I can’t…”
“The last of Kazumitsu’s seed, that’s what they called me. As if that’s all I was. Just a womb to produce another heir for this cursed empire. And do you know what they did, Michi? Gods, could anyone begin to imagine?”
Aisha stared into space, her voice paling to a whisper.
“I was too fragile to receive Hiro’s seed in the usual fashion. And he found no lust for me in my current condition. But the line of Kazumitsu needed its precious son. The Guild needed to cement their Shogun’s legitimacy. So do you know what they used?” She gritted her teeth, spit the words. “A metal tube. A handful of lubricant. As if I were cattle, Michi. As if I were
“My gods…”
“Lord Izanagi, deliver me.” Aisha turned her eyes to the ceiling, voice cracking. “Have mercy upon me, great Maker. If never before this moment, take mercy upon me now.”
“Aisha, I can’t…”
“You can.”
“I can’t.”
“You
Michi held her breath, squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head over and over. She heard the distant sound of heavy blows on iron-shod doors. Splitting timbers.
“I asked when you raised your hand to me, remember?” Aisha said. “I told you I would ask everything of you. I asked if you would give all. Do you remember?”
“I r-remember.”
“Don’t make me beg, Michi. Give me that much.”
“Oh, gods…”
A breathless hush fell over the room, a stillness, broken only by the hiss and click of accursed machines. The machines that damned Aisha to this half-life, bid her languish in the gloom, violated by monstrosities. Michi clenched her teeth, forced herself to suck in one shuddering lungful, tasting smoke and blood, metal and grease, the bile of hatred.
Tears spilled from Aisha’s eyes. “I am so afraid…”
Michi cupped her cheek in one bloody palm, fingers trembling.
“It will be all right, Aisha.”
The woman closed her eyes, reached down and found a calm, long and quiet and deep. Just the slow rise and fall of her chest, the deep void behind her eyes, dark as the womb where first she slumbered. She opened her eyes, and Michi saw strength there, the old strength that had defied a nation.
“Tell me good-bye, Michi-chan.”
Michi leaned down and kissed her eyes, one after the other, salt on her lips. Aisha kept them closed, even after the kisses had ended, her face as serene as if she were sleeping.
“Good-bye, my Lady,” Michi said.
The hair needle sliced through Aisha’s skin, the unfeeling flesh above her pale, blue-scrawled wrists. Once. Twice. A dozen times. No beauty to it. No art. But no pain either.
Blood welled and flowed, sluggish and thick, bright upon the gleaming gold in Michi’s hand. The machines beside the bed shuddered, groaning as if unwilling to let her go. Aisha’s eyes remained closed, a soft slippage from torture into peaceful slumber. Not the gentle deliverance of a woman passing in her bed, surrounded by loved ones after a life well-lived. Not a savior’s death. Not a hero’s.
But at least it was quiet.
Quiet and dark.
Michi forced herself to watch, eyes locked on Aisha’s face. And after an age, an eon, an eternity filled with the shudder and moans of those awful machines, there was a soft exhalation. Gentle as a mother’s hands. And at last, in the end, there came stillness.
And tears.
