A tomcat yowled his lust somewhere in the distance; a solitary cry almost unheard of in Kigen these nights. A pack of corpse-rats perked up their ears, hearing a dinner bell instead. All glinting eyes and crooked fangs, they scampered off through the choking smog.
“Three irons say they get him,” said Seimi.
Hida shrugged, said not a word.
They walked on through Docktown’s warehouse district, as sure of their welcome as a groom at a wedding feast. Past rusting shells, empty windows like sightless eyes. As they crossed over the sluggish tar reek of the Shiroi River, Seimi looked south toward the dry-docked sky-ships, hanging around the Docktown spires like flayed rats in a butcher’s shop window. The pentagonal flanks of the Guild chapterhouse loomed on their right, yellow stone stained by black rain. Seimi doffed his hat in the building’s direction.
When the Kage rebels dropped their bombshell and kick-started the so called “Inochi Riots” four weeks back, the Communications Ministry had rebuffed all claims about the fertilizer’s manufacture. But that didn’t mean the rioters themselves were to go unpunished. Hells, no. Not a drop of chi had been shipped from Kigen’s refinery since the uprising. The embargo was a “reminder to the people” about where their loyalties should lie. And as the engines ground to a halt, as the price of fuel rocketed skyward, they sure as hells remembered quick.
Rationing began almost immediately; sky-ship traffic had slowed since Yoritomo’s death, and the trains hadn’t run since his corpse hit the cobbles. Commonplace items became luxuries overnight. As the city shivered with tiny ripples of civil unrest, curfews were tightened, martial law extended. Music to the ears of men who made their living in the shadows, who swam in markets from murky gray all the way through to ink-black. Men who made it their business to get people what they wanted. What they needed. Provided the price was right.
Men like the Scorpion Children.
Hida and Seimi turned off the thoroughfare, cutting through Kigen’s network of filthy alleyways. The pair were lieutenants of the Children, hard as gravestones, moving through the sprawling labyrinth as easily as a koi fish through still water. The tomcat shrieked nearby, hissing, spitting. Rats screeched, the sound of scuffling bodies rang out in the dark. Seimi grinned through tumbledown teeth.
“Got him.”
The squeezeway was a thin stretch of broken cobbles stinking of beggar piss. It was barely wide enough for the pair to walk down, crawling with sleek, black corpse-rats as long as a wakizashi. But the shortcut would steer them clear of the bushi’ patrols on the main drag, not to mention shave a few minutes off their trip. As it was, the Gentleman was going to chew them out for making him wait past dawn, and neither man was really in the mood for a stabbing.
The rats perked up on their mounds of filth, watched the gangsters approach with eyes like black marbles.
“Mei still giving you trouble?” Seimi asked.
His comrade grunted in reply; Hida never used a word when a shapeless noise would do. He could go days at a time without forming a whole sentence.
“If she’s such a bother, why keep her at all?” Seimi aimed a kick at a fat corpse-rat running between his feet. “The little brothers should be dealing with the White Crane gang, not gutting each other over a dancer. Izanagi’s balls, we’re ninkyo dantai, not—”
Seimi heard soft scratching on the corrugated metal above. He looked up and saw smoke-gray fur, missing ears; a huge tomcat peering at him with bright yellow eyes. The thing stood on the awning overhead, spattered with rat blood. Seimi tilted his hat away from his eyes.
“Well, I’ll b—”
“Is that what you call yourselves?” A voice rang out in the smog ahead.
Hida ground to a halt, feet scuffing the gravel, hefting his tetsubo in sausage-thick fingers. Seimi squinted into the rolling pall of exhaust fumes, making out a lone silhouette in a broad straw hat at the alley exit ahead.
“Ninkyo dantai?” The smile behind the figure’s kerchief was obvious. “‘Chivalrous organization?’ Who you fooling, yakuza?”
“Yakuza?” Seimi hefted his tetsubo, he and Hida stalking toward the stranger. “That’s a dangerous accusation to be throwing about, friend.”
“Close enough,
The yakuza kept advancing, knuckles white on the hafts of their war clubs. Seimi could make out the figure a little clearer. His straw hat had a four-inch gouge down the front, as if someone had taken a swipe with a blade and barely missed. Even behind the black kerchief, it was obvious the stranger was young. Pale, dirty skin and big black eyes. Skinny. Unarmed.
Seimi laughed.
“Does your mother know where you are, boy?”
The boy reached into his obi, drew out a snub-nosed shape. The device gave out a small hiss, a stuttering click. Hida and Seimi rumbled to a stop and stared down the barrel.
“Where the hells did—”
“Seems I’m the one who should be singing now, friend.” The smile in the boy’s voice was long gone. “Seems you’d best grab a cushion and listen a spell.”
The men heard soft footsteps behind, saw a figure drop from the rooftop and cut off their retreat. Another boy by the look, straw hat and dark clothes, a club studded with roofing nails.
Seimi was incredulous.
“Do you know who we are?”
“Clueless, me,” the boy replied. “Now toss the satchels, Scorpion Children.”
Hida spread his stance, rocking back and forth on his heels. The boy at the alley’s mouth aimed the iron- thrower at the yakuza’s chest, pulling ever so slightly on the trigger.
“Gambler?” The boy tilted his head. “Partial to a roll myself, matter of fact.”
“Don’t be stupid,” the one behind them growled. “Walk off or be carried. Either way, we get those bags.”
“Hells with it.” The big-eyed boy leveled the weapon at Hida’s head. “I venture we just do them. Two shots is no bother. Boy my age has plenty more in the pipe, after all…”
“All right, you little bastards.” Seimi dropped his tetsubo, raised his hands. “Take it.”
He slipped the satchel off his shoulder, tossed it to the figure behind.
“What about you, Gambler?” The boy wiggled his eyebrows at Hida.
Hida stood perfectly still, face impassive as a brick wall. He stared for a slow minute, down the iron- thrower’s barrel, up at the calm black eyes hovering beyond. Sparing a scowl for his partner, he slipped his bag from his shoulder and tossed it to the thief behind.
“Very wise, friend.”
The iron-thrower boy waited until his comrade had slunk off into the fog, yakuza and thief staring each other down. The boy’s arm was solid as a statue’s, weapon still aimed at Hida’s head. The yakuza nodded; a small gesture, barely perceptible. His voice was soft as gravel.
“See you soon. Friend.”
The boy tipped his hat.
“Doubtless.”
He disappeared into the smog like a dorsal fin beneath black water.
The Gentleman had killed his first man when he was thirteen years old.
A gang fight in some Kigen back lot, a bloody scrap over a stretch of dirty brick and concrete less than half a city block. He’d dashed into the melee, eager to show his worth to the older gangers. He’d spotted the other boy amongst the crowd, smelled the fear in a heartbeat. So he waded across the mob, blade in hand, and plunged it into the other boy’s gut.
He still remembered the warmth and smell as blood gushed over his hands. Viscous, copperish, far darker than he’d expected. He could still see the look on the boy’s face as he pulled the knife free, stuck it in again a few inches higher. Punching through ribs, twisting as it went, feeling bone crack. The boy clutched his shoulder as the Gentleman looked into his eyes, pain-bright, pulling out the knife and stabbing again. And again. Not out of any
