over the edge and swinging them back and forth like a child, eyes shining with the light of a falling sun. He saw her cheeks were slightly flushed, noticed she was carrying a bottle of sake in her hand. He tried not to stare at the katana strapped to her back.
“I thought you’d want to know.” She took a pull from the bottle, closed her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was strained. “Daichi and the council have voted. The False-Lifer will be kept alive. Locked up, of course. But they’re not going to kill her.”
“That’s good.” He glanced at the liquor again. “I’m glad.”
Sparrows sang to each other in the gloom, calling their good nights as the dark crept closer on velvet-quiet feet.
“Where’s Buruu?” he asked.
“Fishing.” She gifted him with a small smile. “Gorging himself before we leave. He eats like a lotusfiend on a comedown. I hope we can get off the ground.”
“Before you leave? Where are you going?”
“North. Shabishii Island.”
“Can I … come with you?”
She sighed, ran her knuckles across her brow. “I don’t think so. Your thoughts are like a tangle of thorns inside my head.” She held up the bottle, sake sloshing inside. “This is all that’s keeping them quiet.”
“My … thoughts?”
“Not just you.” She waved the bottle across the village. “Everyone. All of you. I can’t shut you out. So I’m just not sure it’s a wonderful idea for me to be around people right now.”
“That’s…” He floundered for the words, shaking his head. “That’s just…”
“Unbelievable?” she sighed. “Terrifying?”
“What’s causing it?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out in Shabishii. I have to control this power, Kin. I have to master it before it masters me. If I don’t, I’m a danger to everyone around me.” She touched his hand. “Including you.”
“Am I hurting you now? I mean … do you want me to go?”
“No.” Her finger trailed across his skin, goosebumps rising. “Not yet…”
Silence fell then. Crushing and empty. All the things he thought he should say sounded hollow in his head. The memory of her lips stirred in his blood, the thought of her body pressed against him echoed in his veins. It felt like she was running away from him. It felt like …
“Well, at least I’ll have something to do when you’re gone,” he shrugged.
She offered a teasing smile. “Miss me terribly?”
“I mean aside from that.” He gave her hand a shy squeeze. “I’m thinking about planting some blood lotus.”
“Lotus?” She blinked. “What for?”
“Experiment with it in a controlled environment. Maybe I can figure out a way to stop it killing the soil it grows in.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“To save what’s left of Shima, of course.” He could feel the warmth radiating from her skin. “Aside from the Iishi, everything is lotus fields or poisoned deadlands.”
“We won’t save Shima by planting more lotus, Kin.”
“Then how will we save it?”
She looked at him strangely then, and her voice was that of a parent talking to an infant.
“We incinerate the fields. So there’s nothing left but ashes.”
“You want to light the whole island on fire?”
“The lotus must burn, Kin. The Guild along with it.”
“But what about afterward? When all this is done?”
“Don’t you think you’re putting the rickshaw before the runner? Instead of worrying about what we do after the war is over, maybe you should think of ways to help us win it?”
He watched her, silent and still. She stared out into the dark, took another pull from the sake bottle. Pale skin, shadows smudged under her eyes. She looked sick, as if she hadn’t eaten or slept properly in days. Oily fingers of anxiety wormed their way into his guts.
“Well, I was thinking about that too,” he said. “I thought we could salvage the ruins of those ironclads. There’s bound to be all kinds of scrap to make the village more defensible. Shuriken-throwers. Armor plating. There are pit traps on the western rise, of course, but everyone around here keeps talking about how there are more oni moving through the lower woods. Old Mari told me they usually get restless after an earthquake, and the one this morning was the worst anyone around here can remember. If they came down in force…”
She sighed, glanced at him in the deepening dark. “They’re not going to let you build anything that runs on chi, Kin.”
“No, we can do it without combustion. I can set up the ’thrower feeders so they’re hand-cranked. They’ll be slower to fire, but it’s gas pressure that does most of the work.” Excitement in his gut, voice running quicker at the thought of building, of
“Ayane?” Yukiko frowned. “When did you talk to her?”
He blinked, confused. “This afternoon. In the prison.”
“Kin, you shouldn’t do that. The Kage don’t trust it … I mean ‘her.’ If you spend time with her, they’re not going to trust you either.”
“You heard Atsushi and Isao at the pit trap this morning.” He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. “None of them trust me anyway.”
“All the more reason to stay away from her.”
“She came all this way to find us. Do you realize what she’s given up to be here?”
“I don’t care what—”
“She’s alone, Yukiko. For the first time since her Awakening, she’s unplugged from the mechabacus. She can’t hear the voice of the Guild anymore, can’t feel them inside her head. Imagine spending years by the hearth of an Upside bedhouse. Everything is light and voices and song. And then one day you get thrown into the dark. You’ve never even seen night before. Never felt cold. But now it’s everywhere. That’s what she’s feeling right now, locked in that cell. That’s what she chose when she decided to come here.”
“We don’t know she
“Did you know every female born in the Guild becomes a False-Lifer?” He felt anger creeping into his voice, turning it hard and ugly and cold. “They don’t get a say in what they want to be. Don’t get to decide who they’re paired with, or when it’s time to breed. They don’t even get to meet the father of their children. Just another False-Lifer with an inseminator tube and a bottle of lubricant.”
“Gods, Kin—”
“So don’t shit on the choices she’s made, Yukiko.” He snatched his hand from hers. “It’s the first thing she’s decided for herself in her entire life. Not everyone gets a thunder tiger to help them out of their mistakes, you know. Some people risk everything they have alone.”
“Kin, I’m sorry…”
He climbed to his feet, and she lurched up after him, knocking the sake bottle onto its side. Rose-colored liquid spilled from the neck, soaking the boards at their feet. Kin turned to leave but she grabbed his hand again, pulled him around to face her.
“Don’t leave like this. Please.”
She was standing just inches away, fingers entwined in his own, lips parted ever so slightly. The world swayed beneath his feet, heart pounding against his ribs like a steamhammer. He was conscious of nothing in the world except her. The scent of her hair entwined in liquor perfume. Her skin radiating the warmth of a kiln, melting his insides. His mouth was suddenly dry, palms soaked. And though he tried, he felt as though he would never catch his breath again.
“Don’t be angry with me, Kin.” She inched closer. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“What
