*
The ascent was torturous, fumbling in the dark, fingers scrabbling against the pipeline’s greasy innards. Kaori was soaked with chi-stink, blood-red reek seeping into every pore. The incline had been gentle at first, but as they climbed higher, the slope deepened, their footing growing ever more treacherous.
Kaori had finally relented to Maro’s demands, lighting a hand-cranked tungsten lamp, throwing long shadows on concave walls. They’d passed through two more pumping stations, forcing through the heavy one-way hatches into cylindrical chambers, twenty feet in diameter. Pistons loomed overhead, frozen in place with no fuel to pump.
Eventually, they heard the rhythmic pulse of machinery ahead, echoing in the oily dark. Shining the light into the gloom, she saw their pipeline curving downward into another below, the join sealed with a heavy, one-way valve. Beyond it, they could hear another pumping station, an intermittent current, like a river of butter sloshing against the pipeline’s guts.
“This must be where the Yama pipe meets the other flows,” Maro muttered. “This is where the fun begins.”
The man had his head tilted, listening to the pistons’ pattern. The pump station below would be a duplicate of the dry stations they’d already passed through—three massive piston chambers, driven by hydraulics. The pistons would draw themselves up, sucking chi into the chambers. Then, one at a time, the pistons would descend, like massive plungers in a syringe, forcing the chi along the pipe. Subsequent pumping action kept the chi flowing once it had moved through, like train commuters being pushed along by people flooding in behind.
“Ten seconds for the chambers to fill,” Maro concluded. “Each piston takes six seconds to hit bottom. Once the third piston hits, all three ascend. Then it starts again.”
“Twenty-eight seconds to swim sixty feet,” Kaori whispered. “That will be tight.”
“The pumping action will help force you through the valves. I’m more worried about breathing. There won’t be much air once we drop into that current. And it’s going to be black as night. Once we’re inside, there’s no turning back.”
Kaori was staring ahead, feeble light reflected in the glass covering her eyes.
“There has never been any turning back,” she murmured. “For any of us. Everything we are, everything we’ve done has brought us to this moment. This minute. This second.”
She looked at the Kagé gathered in the dark, each in turn.
“And I am not afraid.”
*
The wind was a thousand knives, flaying skin from bone.
The frost left bite marks on Hana’s skin, black snow frozen on her goggles. She leaned into Akihito for warmth as they spiraled down to the gaijin camp. Remembering falling asleep with his breath kissing the back of her neck. Brute strength wrapped in gentle tenderness.
She could feel Kaiah’s apprehension, spilling into her and setting her hands to shaking. The arashitora rankled at the thought of returning Hana to this army of fools—these monkey-children who skinned beasts and wore them in some preposterous attempt to usurp their strength.
- WHAT DOES THIS RITUAL ENTAIL? -
I’ve no idea.
- DANGEROUS? -
I don’t know that either.
- THEN WHY DO THIS? WE SHOULD BE WITH THE OTHERS, PREPARING FOR BATTLE. LITTLE FOXES ARE OUTNUMBERED TWO TO ONE. -
I trust Uncle Aleksandar.
- A MAN YOU MET TWO DAYS AGO. -
Family is everything to him. He promised to protect me.
- PROMISES ARE ONLY WORDS. -
Piotr promised to get the Guildsman’s letter back to his beloved, and he betrayed his own people to do it. That’s how much a promise means to a Morcheban.
- AND THE FOOLS TAKE HIM BACK. EVEN AFTER HIS BETRAYAL. -
Because he found me. That’s how much I mean to them.
- DO NOT LIKE THIS. IF YUKIKO WERE HERE … -
Yukiko told me to be brave. That’s what I’m doing. The Goddess could give me the power to see the way to victory. To see the future. Who knows what I’ll be after this ritual is done?
- NOBODY KNOWS. THAT IS WHAT TROUBLES ME. -
This is a part of me, Kaiah. Every bit as much as the Kenning. We can still fight. The sooner this is over, the sooner we can join the battle for Yama.
The thunder tiger was silent, brooding. Head swimming with vague notes of sadness, of loss, of tiny bundles thrown wingless and bleeding into the void.
Nothing is going to happen to me, Kaiah. You’re there to protect me. Akihito too. The first sign of danger, we get the hells out of there. It’s going to be all right. You’ll see.
- NOT THE ONLY ONE, I HOPE. -