Gritting her teeth, she stretched into the gloom beyond, trying to wrest the Kenning under some kind of control. It felt like opening herself up to a hurricane, stepping naked into wind and fire, a rolling sea beneath her. She could sense a cluster of warmth; dozens of gaijin crammed together, above, below, around. Pushing out further. Wincing at the pain. Feeling something warm in the distance, the sound of a tempest, a flash of heat.
And then she sensed them. Far below, like nothing she’d touched before. Cold and slippery and bejeweled, staring back at her with eyes of polished yellow glass.
Hissing.
She withdrew, slammed the door shut on her power, folded down on herself and drew a long, shuddering breath. Even with her newfound strength, she hadn’t been able to sense Buruu. Was he unconscious? Dead? What had happened to him?
Blinking, ignoring the pounding ache in her head, she tried to remember. The sensation of falling came first; the terrifying split second of inertia as momentum failed and gravity took hold. Choppy red water beneath her, rising fast. Impact knocking the breath from her lungs. Sodden clothes dragging her down, shapes in the sky above as lightning flashed.
Arashitora. Two males.
“Shima?”
The familiar word pulled her back into the room, into the half-blind stare of the dark-haired man. The gaijin was looking at her intently, arms folded, a far throw from friendly. The blond boy stared at the floor, sucking on the smoking stick, exhaling clouds of honey-scented gray. The headache was a raw wound drilled behind her ears, chiseled atop her spine.
“You Shima?” Astonishingly, the scarred man was speaking in her own tongue—he had a broken, bowlegged accent, but his words were Shiman nonetheless. Stepping closer, he pointed to her, then waved in a direction she presumed was south. The gaijin walked with a severe limp, and when his right foot hit the stone, she heard the chink of metal.
“Hai,” she nodded. “Shima.”
The man scowled and turned on the blond boy, raising his hand as if to strike him, spitting angry gibberish. The boy flinched away, smoke stick crushed between gritted teeth.
“Please.” She licked her lips, voice cracking. “Where am I?”
“Eh?” The scarred man frowned, turned toward her.
“Can you understand me?”
“Little.” He pinched the air between forefinger and thumb. “Little.”
“Where am I?” She annunciated the words clearly. “Where?”
He snapped at her—an angry spiel she didn’t understand.
“I don’t—”
Roaring, face growing red, storming over to the cot. He raised his hand and she shied away, cringing against the wall. The slap caught her full on the cheek, knocked her near-senseless, kindling the pain lurking behind her eyes. Sinking down onto the mattress, she screwed one eye shut in anticipation of another blow.
“Piotr.” The blond boy spoke a mouthful of tumbling words, concern plain in his voice.
Yukiko looked up at the dark-haired gaijin, blood in her mouth, salt biting at the split in her lip. She thrashed briefly against her restraints.
“You touch me again and I’ll
The man lowered his hand, calloused, broad as a war fan. He stared at his fingers and mumbled, limped back to the blond, spitting out another tangle of nonsense. The boy stalked from the room, wet footprints in his wake. The older man lurked by the doorway, running one finger down the scar beneath his eye, thunderclouds gathered over his head.
With shaking hands, he fished a wooden pipe carved like a fish from his pocket, stuffing it with dry leaves from a leather pouch. Yukiko could see a red jacket with brass buttons beneath his white coat, more insignia pinned to the collar.
Crossed swords.
“Sorry.” He waved to her face. “He sorry, you.”
Yukiko stared at the man’s leg, saying nothing. She could see a metal brace buckled around his shin, a piston-driven actuator at his knee. Flesh, augmented with machinery.
The man snapped his fingers on another slab of burnished steel lifted from a breast pocket. Fire gleamed in his blind eye, deepened the shadow of the hooked scar along his left cheek as he coaxed his pipe to life. He snapped his fingers again and the flame was snuffed out.
“Who are you people?” she asked.
The man shrugged, muttered words Yukiko didn’t understand. She hung her head, breathing deep, suddenly and terribly afraid. The scent drifting from the gaijin’s lips reminded her of her father. Of cloying smoke curling up through a graying moustache. Of stained fingers and a bloated body wrapped all in white, waiting for the fire to claim it. And she hadn’t even been there. Hadn’t even said good-bye …
“Gods?”
She looked up at the gaijin’s face. He was pointing to the sky, the brow above his blind eye raised in question.
“Have gods?”
“Hai,” she nodded. “I have gods.”
The man put his pipe to his lips, shook his head, spoke through clenched teeth as he shuffled from the room.
“Pray.”
Yukiko sat in the dark for long moments, waiting for the headache to subside. She could hear crashing surf, smell rust and oil hanging in the air. Shivering in her damp clothes, she clenched her fists repeatedly, thongs cutting into her wrists. And finally, when the ache had dimmed to a pale flicker, she pulled her slender defenses back together, brick by brick. A bulwark of all the substance she could muster; the rage Daichi had assured her was her greatest strength, mortar made of memories. Yoritomo’s blade cleaving through Buruu’s feathers. Her father’s grave. His blood on her hands. Teeth gritted. Seething. And with her wall in place, she reached out with the Kenning again.
A quick, directionless stab, feeling for any sign of Buruu, like a shout in a darkened room. But there was nothing close to his warmth nearby, and the distant, muddy heat she sensed didn’t wear his shape at all. Almost as soon as she opened herself up, the headache flared, the heat of the human bodies around her crackling, flame-bright and brittle. Beneath her feet, she felt those
Her face felt tender where the scarred man had slapped her, tongue probing her split lip. She tasted salt. Blood.
Closing her eyes, she remembered the smaller warmth she’d felt close by. Reaching out with a tiny, narrowed sliver of herself, she found it not far away. Curled up beside a heating duct, just a few doors down. An old blanket beneath him, tail wagging as he worried a strip of rawhide clamped between his front paws.
A dog.
Head tilted to one side, tail falling still, one ear standing to attention.
