Kinslayer

How pure were his motives for accepting the throne Kensai had dangled before him?

The iron hand at his side clenched, the ashes of funeral offerings caked upon his lips.

“Treacherous bastards all of us…” he breathed.

The Floating Palace loomed above the slaughter, buoyed by swelling thermals rushing up from Kigen’s blazing carcass. With a few more ships, Hiro felt he could have taken on the flying fortress and blown it from the clouds. But, incomprehensibly, Second Bloom Kensai had diverted two Guild ironclads from the battle and sent them chasing the Kage rebels, now fleeing the city in some Dragon merchantman. Hiro had received reports that the leader of the Kage had been captured by the Lotusmen—he was already in their godsdamned hands. But Kensai seemed intent on ending the rebellion tonight, once and for all. To the hells with Shima’s capital. No matter if these effete Fushicho bastards turned Kigen into an inferno.

Shin and Shou had sat at his table. He had welcomed them into his city. And now they were burning that city to cinders. But if Kigen was truly his, if the throne, the mantle, the Way held any meaning for him at all, surely he owed it more than a token defense? Surely he owed the people below, his people, all he had to give?

Hiro clenched his teeth, enamel grinding, a burning glare set on the towering sky-ship laying all about it to waste. He turned to the Tigress captain.

“Send word to the Kazumitsu’s Honor.” He nodded to the other Tiger vessel floating off their starboard. “Send to the Guild ships also. Full attack.”

“Hai!” the captain barked.

Engines kicked into the red, the Tigress shuddering as she swung her snout around and lumbered toward the enemy. The Phoenix corvettes were swift to intercept, filling the sky between Hiro and his quarry. Crews manning the Tigress’s batteries opened up, and chug!chug!chug!chug! came the thunder of the shuriken-throwers. The corvettes returned fire, men on both sides became limp, lifeless meat, washing the decks with their insides, red as lotus blooms. Hiro ducked low, a shuriken whistling over his head, two more spanging off his spaulders and breastplate. A Phoenix corvette dropped from the sky, crashed into the walls of Kigen arena. Another collided with the Guild ship Red Bloom, clipping its inflatable and exploding into flame, the falling ironclad immolating a city block below.

Screams of pain from the streets beneath him. Prayers for mercy.

And there he stood, with none to give.

The Phoenix corvettes came about for a second attack as the Tiger fleet drew within range of the Floating Palace’s heavy ’throwers. The barrage hit Hiro’s ships like hail in winter’s bleakest hour, tearing holes through the Honor and littering its decks with dead. Another Phoenix corvette burst into flames and exploded in midair, momentum stringing its remnants out along the sky like fireworks on a feast day. Engines roaring, men around Hiro screaming for coordinates, for ammunition, for their mothers, lying in puddles of their own guts and clutching the places their limbs were supposed to be. The air filled with gleaming, hissing death, a tempo and percussion of razor-sharp steel and chug!chug!chug! chug! went the music they all danced to, and when it stopped there was only roaring propellers and cries of pain and lifeless shapes staring at starless skies. Eyes and mouths open. Seeing and saying nothing at all.

“We can’t get close, my Lord!” the captain cried. “Our inflatable is already ruptured! I can’t keep her aloft for long!”

“Get on the radio to Kensai!” Hiro roared. “We need those ironclads back here!”

“They’re pursuing the Kage, great Lord!”

“To the Endsinger with the Kage! If these Phoenix bastards decide to destroy Kigen rather than claim it as their own—”

As if bidden, the Floating Palace changed course, swinging away from the Tiger palace and bringing itself to bear on the smoking chimney stacks to the west of the blazing bay.

The refinery …

The ground around the chi refinery glittered with blood-red eyes and firelight reflections, gleaming on the suits of dozens of Guild Purifiers. The Lotusmen were dousing everything in sight with flame-retardant foam, Guild marines spraying burning buildings with black water pumped in from the bay, beating back the inferno from the refinery storage tanks. But if the Floating Palace had any fire-barrage munitions in reserve …

The captain of Kazumitsu’s Honor had sent his ship on a roaring collision course with the Palace, but as she drew close, her inflatable was riddled with heavy ’thrower fire. The ironclad’s return salvo tore great, heaving gouges in the Palace’s own balloon, but its sheer size and number of hydrogen compartments kept the behemoth afloat, droning toward its target. The air was filled with half a dozen Phoenix corvettes, cutting through the rolling smoke, airborne sparks dancing like fireflies.

In a minute, maybe less, the Phoenix would be directly over the refinery.

One barrel would be all it took.

“Captain,” Hiro said. “Set course for the Palace. Ramming speed.”

“… Hai!”

Hiro cursed, licked ashes from his lips. Be this his last breath, he’d take those honorless dogs down to walk with him in the hells. The iron fist at his side clenched, involuntary, thoughts turning to the vengeance he’d now be forever denied. The murder he’d dreamed of, her face upturned to his, terror in her eyes as he closed iron fingers around that pretty throat and squeezed the very life from her body.

And then thunder tore the skies.

The reverb rolling down his spine, familiar as a lover’s fingertips, goosebumps rippling across his skin. Running to the railing. Ashes cracking on his cheeks as he narrowed his eyes, squinted into the fire-clad pall filled with sparks and smoke and screams of the dying.

Looking for them.

Looking for her.

And like a dream, there she was.

“Yukiko…”

* * *

Buruu’s roar cut the sky, talons tearing through the inflatable of a swift Phoenix corvette, sending it tumbling to the earth. Yukiko was pressed low to his back, katana drawn, hair streaming behind her in a cinder wind. The air was filled with shuriken fire, burning sky-ships, Tiger and Guild and Phoenix, all hammering at each other with every ’thrower they had. The city below was ablaze, folk fleeing in screaming droves, the night almost as bright as the day. Chaos. Absolute bloody chaos.

LOVELY WEDDING.

Buruu’s thoughts echoed in the Kenning, underscored with the reverb of psychic trauma in the city below and fatigue from their frantic eight-day flight here. Yukiko’s eyes were full of sand, head heavy as lead, bruised face and pounding skull. Every muscle aching. Every breath burning. Buruu and Kaiah had both given almost everything to get here, but at least they’d made it in time to see. The sight filled her with horror and joy, the fury and bedlam of it all. She had no idea where they’d even begun, but somehow Kin and Daichi and Kaori had done it. Set the wolves upon each other. Torn the wedding night to tatters and Hiro’s dreams of dominion to ruins. She could taste smoke through her grin.

Reaching out through the Kenning’s heat, she felt for the thunder of Kaiah’s psyche, pulled the female arashitora’s thoughts into herself, wincing at the volume. Beneath a pulsing rush of pain against her wall, blood on her lips, she could feel both thunder tigers inside her mind, her thoughts a conduit between each, her skull echoing with the pair’s bloodlust and awe.

I don’t know what the hells is going on here. But unless I’m mad, those Phoenix ships are attacking the city.

—LEAVE MONKEY-CHILDREN TO THEIR SLAUGHTER?—

Buruu growled in response.

THERE ARE INNOCENTS IN THE CITY BELOW.