Blackbird chuckled as she scooped up her chainblades and strapped them to her back.
“Working on the book?” Blackbird eyed the paper and quills on the table.
“I know, I know. Bottles of ink don’t win battles…”
“Just seems a shame to have spent what could be your last night alive on it.”
She leaned down and kissed Tomo’s nose, pointed to her scroll still drying on the table. “I’ll be back to write the ending tonight, little one. Guard it for me while I’m gone.”
Tomo licked her face with his bright pink tongue, closed his eyes. Michi squeezed the wicks of her candles, snuffing them out, one by one by one. Smoke uncoiled from melted wax, weaving fingers of pale-gray in the frozen air, the scent of warm honey making her sigh.
And without a backward glance, she turned and walked away.
*
Hiro stood on the bow of the Honorable Death, watching black tumble from the clouds. Eyes fixed on the city lights, river like black glass in the almost-dawn. The fleet filling the skies about him, the clattering tread of the shreddermen below, the barrage of the Earthcrusher’s footsteps—all of it stirring the butterflies in his belly, the adrenaline gnawing his veins.
“Daimyo Hiro, forgiveness.”
Hiro turned to find one of his samurai behind him, head bowed.
“We have received a transmission, marked for your eyes only.”
The samurai handed over a square of rice-paper, embossed with an authentication seal. Hiro looked at him briefly, face daubed with fresh ashes, armor painted the color of death. They stood all around him—the glorious Kazumitsu Elite. Men who had failed their Shōgun, now consigned to death. This was the day their shame would be expunged. To destroy Yoritomo’s assassin, crush the insurrection, and then to step before the great judge Enma-ō and know they had fought bravely, for as righteous a cause as any left in this nation.
“You look tired, Koji-san,” Hiro said to the samurai. “Did you sleep?”
“I confess I did not, Daimyo.”
“Nor I,” Hiro smiled. “Time enough for sleep when we are dead.”
“I long for it,” Koji’s whisper rolled in freezing wind. “Every breath since Yoritomo’s murder has been drawn in disgrace. But today my family may hold their heads high again.”
“Did they not hold them high before?”
“My wife … She said it didn’t matter. That she’d rather live with me disgraced than lose me for honor’s sake. But she is a woman. She does not understand the Way of Bushido.”
“And your sons? What did they say when you told them you were headed to your death?”
“… I did not tell them. They are too young to understand.”
“One day they will, Koji-san. They will look back on this day, and they will know their father was a hero. They will grow to be honorable and brave, just like him.”
Koji covered his fist and bowed. “My thanks, Daimyo.”
The Iron Samurai clomped away, his ō-yoroi spitting chi into the greasy air. Hiro remembered his father’s words in the throne room, an insistent echo inside his head.
“Lord Izanagi give you the strength to die well.”
He looked at the note in his hand, recognized his father’s seal. No doubt a final message from the ruined war hero, some last words to ensure his son didn’t falter. He snapped the authentication seal, unfolded the message within. The wind moaned around him, tiny black snowflakes falling on his lashes, the deck beneath his feet. His gaze was fixed on the calligraphy, painstakingly rendered—handwriting he recognized instantly.
My beloved son,
It is duty that drags you north, far from those who love you. It is duty that would see you end, before you have truly lived, so that our honor may be restored. And it is my duty as a wife to honor my husband and wish you the courage to die well.
But I cannot.
There is no sense to this. No honor in any of it. We have built a world where we murder children to feed our soil. War upon those different for the sake of greed. We hold the ease the machine brings above the wellbeing of the land around us. We should be ashamed.
A man needs no courage to die. He need only close his eyes. It takes courage to fight on, when all hope seems gone. To struggle through, when the hurt and shame seem too much.
It is your father’s dream to see our shame expunged. But if I must mourn you, I would have it be for something more than avenging the Shōgun who oversaw our fall from grace. For the dream of a father who has never created anything worthwhile, except that which he would now destroy. For it is only when we are asleep that we dream, Hiro. It is only when we close our eyes that such dreams make sense. That we believe them real.
Open your eyes, my son.
Wake up.
Hiro clenched his fist, metal knuckles gleaming, his prosthetic arm spitting out a small plume of chi. He looked again to the horizon, the lights of Yama, slowly rousing from slumber. The faces beside him, painted with the ashes of their own funeral offerings.