Kinslayer

Waiting to burn.

Magistrate Ichizo slid the door to her suite open, and she stared into the small, familiar room. Unmade bed, drawers upended, clothes strewn over the floor. She could see the congealed bloodstain on the wicker matting, reached up to touch the scab at her cheek, the memory of the knife strikes on her forearms, the blow to her face, fresh and real in her mind.

“You will forgive the state of things.” Ichizo’s tone was apologetic. “Another minister must have ordered your possessions searched. The past month has been … turbulent. I am sure it will not take long to put all back in order.”

“My thanks, my Lord.”

“You … do not remember me, do you?”

A shake of her head. “Forgive me, my Lord.”

“We met last spring festival.” A gentle smile in his voice. “The Seii Taishogun’s banquet. We spoke about poetry. The strengths of Hamada over Noritoshi. I recall that evening fondly…”

She looked up at him then, still clutching his robe about her shoulders, and her face crumpled like candle wax in a burning fireplace. She threw her arms around him and sobbed, pressing herself into his chest to muffle her wails. The magistrate was taken aback, unsure whether to embrace her or push her away. He nodded to the bushimen flanking him, and they retreated to spare her further loss of face.

“Come now, my dear.” He patted her awkwardly on her shoulder. “You shame yourself.”

“It was so awful.” Hot tears soaked into scarlet silk. “The l-last thing I remember was the Kitsune girl h- hitting me. Then I woke in that cell and they were screaming at me, calling me a tr-traitor. My gods, there was no servant more loyal to Yoritomo-no-miya than I…”

“Hush now.” He tried to hug and push her away simultaneously, failing on both counts. “They will not hurt you again. You may not leave these rooms unattended, but you will suffer no more ill-treatment. Upon my honor, I vow it.”

“Thank you, Lord Ichizo. Bless you.”

She stood on tiptoes and kissed him, soft as summer showers down his cheek, until at last she reached his lips. And there she pressed herself, just a little longer, pushing her body against his. He broke away with a nervous smile, extricating himself and straightening his kimono.

“Very good, very good.” A small cough. “Duty well served.”

She was ushered inside, tear-soaked, pawing her eyes with her sleeve. Ichizo bowed and backed out of the room, shutting and locking the door behind him, his cheeks a subtle shade of rose. She stood amidst the flotsam and jetsam and continued sobbing, just loud enough to be heard through the walls. As their footsteps faded across the polished boards, she counted one hundred heartbeats, weeping still. And finally, she dropped her hands away from her face and the tears stopped as if someone had choked them.

She stared into the warm void on the back of her eyelids, listening to the emptiness inside her head. Still and mute in the free air. Finally, she moved, stalking toward the washroom, toward clean water and sweet- smelling soap, intent on scrubbing the prison from her skin.

She glanced at the looking glass as she passed by, caught a glimpse of her reflection. For a terrifying moment, she was seized by the unshakeable sensation that a stranger stared back at her. Oh, the long dark hair, the slender body, the plump, pouting lips were all hers. But the face belonged to someone else entirely; a girl she didn’t know, and didn’t care to. A weakling whose skin she wore.

She stripped the rags and robe from her shoulders, stared at her body in the mirror. The stain of false tears on skin she had pinched until it was red and swollen. The knife wounds she had carved into her own arms. The cheek she had slammed against the corner of her own dresser. Remembering the rats squealing and flailing in her hands as she pressed them to her flesh. Anything, everything to evoke pity, to soften the hearts she longed to tear still-beating from their chests.

The urge to smash the reflection burned bright in her mind. She stared at her doppelganger, the tiny, broken girl she pretended to be, hands curling into fists.

“You are death,” she whispered. “Cold as winter dawn. Merciless as Lady Sun. Play the role. Play it so well you could fool yourself. But never forget who you are. What you are.”

She pointed at the glass, and her whisper was sharp as knives.

“You are Kage Michi.”

5 CHRYSALIS

Cold nausea in her belly, bubbling past her lungs to the tip of her tongue.

Blood-red eyes stared at Yukiko from the pit trap’s gloom—polished glass affixed in a bone-smooth, mouthless face. The membrane covering the figure’s body was brown as old leather, glossy and supple, creased at the joints. A transistor-studded mechabacus on its chest and the cables snaking around it body marked it as Guild, the cluster of thin, chromed limbs at its back completing the horrific, arachnoid portrait.

“What the hells is that?” she breathed.

“A False-Lifer.” Kin frowned, pawing at his stubble.

“A what?”

Yukiko glanced at the boy beside her, hand still on her tanto hilt. Buruu loomed near her shoulder, watching the pit with narrowed eyes. The warmth radiating from his fur gave her goosebumps, that now-familiar scent of ozone and musk filling the air, flecked with electricity.

“They create the flesh-automata for the Guild.” Kin shrugged. “The servitors that work in the chapterhouses. The city criers that trundle about calling the hour. They conduct surgical procedures, install implants into newborns, that kind of thing.”

Four sets of eyes looked at him as if he were speaking gaijin.

“They build machines that emulate life.” He waved one hand in the air. “False. Lifer.”

“Gods above,” Atsushi breathed.

“What’s it doing here?” Isao demanded.

“Do I look like a mind reader?” Kin asked.

Isao glanced at Yukiko. “If we were alone, I’d tell you exactly what you look like, Guildsman.”

Kin blinked, opened his mouth to retort when a graveled, sibilant rasp drifted up from the pit. Half statement, half question, retched from the belly of some rusted metal serpent.

“Guildsman?” The thing tilted its head, looking at Kin. “You are Kioshi?”

The name sparked a chill in Yukiko’s gut, slick and oily. An unwelcome reminder of who and what Kin had been in days past. The name of a father long dead, a Lotusman of station and esteem, passed to his only son as Guild custom bid. The name Kin had called himself, encased in that metal skin. The name of the stranger. The enemy. Before she’d discover the boy beneath the brass. Before he’d …

“Shut up!” Isao raised his tetsubo, apparently amazed to hear the thing speak. “Shut your mouth or I’ll cave your skull in, bastard.”

The False-Lifer raised its hands. Seven of its metallic arms lifted up in unison. The eighth spat a shower of blue sparks and twitched, dangling beside the Guildsman’s leg.

“I mean no harm to any of you,” it hissed. “By the First Bloom, I vow it.”

“What the hells is a First Bloom?” Isao spat.

“The leader of the Lotus Guild,” Kin said. “The Second Bloom of every chapterhouse reports to him.”

“And you people swear by him like he’s a god?”

Kin stared at the boy for an empty moment, then turned back to the thing in the pit.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Looking for you, Kioshi-san.”

Looking for him?

“My name is Kin.”