*
The command tent’s ceiling had been peeled away, ushering in the rising sun’s feeble light. Black snowflakes drifted through the gap, hissing as they ended in the roaring firepit. The room was pitch-dark behind her goggles—Hana could barely see a thing. But Katya and Natassja held her hands, one apiece, and Hana was afraid of doing or saying anything wrong. So she remained mute and near-blind behind polarized glass, stumbling as she was led to the fire’s edge.
She could make out trophies lining the walls—ō-yoroi from dead Iron Samurai, chainkatana, bloodied flags set with the standard of the Dragon clan. The Marshal’s six huge warhounds sat in one corner, softly wheezing, but their master was nowhere to be seen. She reached out to caress their minds before slipping back into Kaiah’s thoughts, the bottomless strength she found there. A courage born of endless, raging storms.
I will not be afraid.
Natassja circled the flames, her eye a burning point of brightness even through dark glass. Katya pulled Hana down to kneel opposite, entwined her fingers in the Holy Mother’s. Each woman’s right eye was aglow, fierce and bright, hands joined around the flames.
I will NOT be afraid.
Natassja began speaking, her voice low, musical—a supplication before a power both feared and respected. Natassja closed her eyes, Katya followed suit, and Hana felt the air grow heavier, the tang of iron and blood in back of her throat as the Sisters joined voices, a tune that at any other moment might have seemed terrifying, ending in a rhythmic chanting, breathed at the last like the words of lovers into the ears of their desire.
Natassja opened her eyes, that rose-clad glow spilling into the scars lining her face. Her expression was indulgent, full of love—the smile of a parent watching a clumsy child in an innocent blunder. The old woman spoke softly, pointed to her face, but Hana couldn’t understand the words. She licked her lips, again tasting bloody oxides.
“I don’t understand,” she said, panic rising.
Had she done something wrong? Had she offended?
Katya bared her saw-tooth smile, leaned across the firelight, pulling Hana’s kerchief down around her throat. The girl felt the momentary fear evaporate, finally realizing they just wanted to see her face.
“Oh,” Hana smiled. “Forgiveness, please.”
Katya smiled in return. And reaching up, she pulled the goggles down from her eyes.
Firelight gleamed bright, dazzling after the gloom.
And then everything came undone.
*
Kaori dropped down through the hatchway, sinking into the blood-red flood, warm and sticky-thick. She kicked to surface; a few feeble inches of air at the top of the pipeline, spitting her breath and sucking in another reeking lungful. Maro and the others dropped in beside her, the tungsten lamp sputtering out and plunging all into darkness.
Almost immediately they were moving, sucked farther up the pipeline by a tumbling current. Kaori’s head smashed against a low-hanging seam, stars bursting in her eyes. Dazed and near-senseless, sputtering, the gash in her scalp burning at the fuel’s touch. The current choked off as pump chambers filled and valves closed, silence falling like a feather. She was able to collect herself, pressing her hands against the curved ceiling, trying to suck down more of that awful choking air as twenty-eight seconds ticked by, lifetime by lifetime.
As if into the lungs of some titanic beast, the current kicked in again, dragging them farther along the pipeline, tears in her eyes. So it went on; torn up the pipe like a rag doll, floundering for a handful of heartbeats, then hauled along again. The motion was violent, sickening, the current dragging her down, down toward the bloody dark where her screams would go unheard. The pumps grew louder, nausea rising, threatening to spill from her lips and fill her breather, leave her choking on the contents of her own innards. She swallowed hard, another pulse gripping her, flinging her, a child at the mercy of some unholy tempest.
She heard Maro’s voice over the thunder, the deafening beat of her own pulse.
“We must be close! Breathe deep and swim for your life!”
But how could she breathe deep when every breath threatened to choke her? When the air itself was poison, wringing the bile from her throat, retching dry, gods, gods help me— And then it took her. That colossal undertow. Dragging her down through the great valve, sucking her into the black beyond. Head over heels, up and down meaningless, utterly dark. The groan of the great pistons to her left … or was it behind? Was she even here at all? Curled up in her bed in the Shōgun’s palace, all her life before her, a father who loved her, a princeling who wanted her, a golden throne beckoning and all the treasures and pleasures of the Seven Isles laid glittering at her feet …
Swim, godsdamn you.