Kinslayer

The old woman nodded that all was ready, and Hana stepped into the bathroom, Daken keeping watch from a rooftop outside. A broad wooden tub was filled with cloudy water, the air hung thick with steam. Hana stripped off her grubby clothes, stared at herself in the fog-blurred looking glass. Insect-thin, long-limbed, ribs showing clearly beneath her skin. A too-flat chest, a narrow neck, hung with a tiny amulet on a leather thong. It gleamed in the candlelight; a golden oval set with a rearing stag, three tiny horns shaped like crescent moons. No matter how hungry, no matter how desperate things got, Yoshi had never let her sell it. It had been a gift from their mother, those brilliant blue eyes shining with love as she’d tied it around Hana’s neck on her tenth birthday.

“Wear it with pride,” she had said.

All they had left of her.

Sitting on the edge of the tub, rinsing black dye through her hair and watching the stains pool on the tile about her feet, she looked at the pile of new clothes Yoshi had brought her. The cut was good, the thread was fine. The boots alone would have cost two irons. Her thoughts turned to dark places, and she wondered again where her brother’s coin had come from. Who was missing it out there in the dark.

She’d asked Daken of course, but the cat had simply set sandpaper tongue to his not-so-privates, pretending like she’d never spoken. Though it had been Hana who raised the tom, though he slept beside her every day, it was Yoshi who’d fished the crying, bedraggled mop of fur from the storm drain all those years ago. The kitten had been near-dead, chewed by vermin, ears missing, tail gnawed; a lucky escapee from one of the last restaurants with coin to run the breathing pens required to keep kittens alive in Kigen’s roiling stink. And ever since that moment, there was something between Daken and Yoshi—something beneath the violent jibes and the excrement surprises planted beneath the bedclothes. An affection she supposed brothers would share, hidden behind coarseness and cruel jokes and indifference.

A debt as heavy as a sopping handful of mewling fur.

And so, Hana let it drop, let the cat and her brother keep their secrets. She knew one night she might learn the hard way where the money came from, but for the next few days at least, she had bigger issues to think about …

And walking through the predawn streets of the refinery district half an hour later, there he was. Leaning in an empty doorway. Framed by the crumbling shell and boarded windows of an abandoned tannery like some street-side master’s portrait.

“Well, well,” Akihito smiled. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“Bath day,” she shrugged. “New clothes.”

“You look nice,” he said, eyes on the street over her shoulder.

Hana smiled, trying to still the thrill of delight inside her. “I finally spoke to Michi. She has a plan to get herself out of her cell.”

Akihito nodded. “You can tell me about it when we get back to your flat.”

Daken prowled up to the big man, brushed against his leg, purring. Akihito stooped with a smile, scruffed the tom behind his mangled ears.

“You know he usually hates people,” Hana said. “Last stranger who tried to pet him got opened up from elbow to wrist. But he’s taken to you like a fiend to the pipe.”

“Well, we hunters have to stick together.”

Hana watched Daken push back against Akihito’s fingers, purring soft, eyes closed.

Gods, you’re a slattern, boy.

… nice hands …

Don’t tease.

… my job …

“All right then.” She nodded to Akihito. “Shall we be off?”

“Hai.” He straightened, pulling his hat down over his brow. “The drop box is secluded, but there might still be bushi’ about, so keep your eyes open—” Akihito’s gaze snagged on her leather patch, his cheeks flushing.

She smirked to see him stumble, running one hand over his braids, abashed and mumbling and sweet as sugar-rock.

“Gods, I’m sorry,” he said. “You know what I mean…”

“I know what you mean, Akihito-san. And it’s fine, really.”

A small smile, hidden by her new kerchief.

I have hundreds, after all.

* * *

They stole through the gloomy, tangled warren of Downside, Akihito limping in front, Hana close behind. The days were growing colder, night falling heavier. Each afternoon as the Sun Goddess sank to her rest, Kigen’s citizens slunk homeward, curfew nipping at their heels like hungry wolves. The distant tread of bushimen ringing across cracked cobbles, the city’s once-crowded streets as empty as her throne. And behind closed doors, Kigen’s people looked toward the palace crouched upon the hillside, and whispered. Or plotted. Or prayed.

The pair kept to the deepest shadows, the girl taking the lead, quiet as whispers. The smell of Kigen Bay crawled up from the city’s nethers, the hiss and stutter-clank of the refinery, strangling the glow of distant stars. Chi lanterns lined the streets; tiny pinpricks of light burning in braziers shaped like lotus blooms. A Guild crier trundled past on rubber treads; looking like a short, faceless fat man of riveted metal, spine dotted with exhaust pipes, bells clutched in each stunted hand.

The smoke in the mechanoid’s wake made Akihito’s throat burn as they passed by. The scent reminded him of Masaru’s pipe, stained fingers, his friend’s eyes alight with laughter.

You should never have left them.

He looked down at his leg, the dull pain of his wound flaring every time his right heel struck the ground. He could still see them in his mind’s eye; Masaru crouched in the jail cell, hands and lips smeared with red. Kasumi lying against the wall, pool of blood swelling all around her, bubbling on her lips as she spoke her last words to him.

“Fight another day, you big lump.”

The last time he’d ever seen either of them alive.

At least Yukiko had taken Masaru’s body with her when she flew north. At least he would’ve received a decent burial. But would the Shogun’s dogs have burned offerings for Kasumi to Enma-o? Would they have painted her face with ashes, as the Book of Ten Thousand Days commanded? Or did they just throw her body into some dank alleyway to be gnawed by corpse-rats? Would the Judge of the Nine Hells have weighed her fair, with no rites held in her name? Would the spirit stones Akihito left in Market Square be enough to see her soul through?

Curse you for a coward. You should’ve died with them. And if she was cast into Yomi to languish as a hungry ghost, at least you would’ve been with her. At least she wouldn’t be alone.

Hana grabbed his hand, tearing him from gloomy thoughts and back into the deeper gloom of Kigen’s streets. She dragged him into a narrow alley between a grubby textile store and a small temple. Slipping in beside him, she pressed against his arm, breathing low and measured.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Hssst!” A finger on his lips.

Akihito frowned, remained mute. The girl was staring directly at the wall, eye curling up inside its socket, lashes flickering. He heard the sound of heavy boots, peered out into the street, saw two bushimen emerging from an alley half a block away; black iron and blood-red tabards. They were pushing a young woman before them.

Their voices were low, just snatches beneath the refinery’s groan and clank, Akihito’s heart pounding in his chest. The first bushiman shoved the girl again; a small, pretty thing, clutching a torn servant’s kimono at her throat. Tear-streaked face, kohl running down her cheeks, hair tangled across bloodshot eyes.

“Be off.” One bushiman was retying his obi, war club under his arm. “You’ll find no more sport here, girl. Your master should know better than to send you into Downside before dawn.”

The girl ran weeping, back in the direction of the Upside mansions on the hill. The second soldier yelled after her.

“We catch you out again after curfew, we’ll send you home with more than a limp!”