Ear to ear.
Black snow tumbling from the sky. Tumbling just like him. Hands at his neck, the flood of his blood almost scalding in the clawing chill. Collapsing to his knees. Dull roaring in his mind. Bubbling foam between his fingers, pink and bright. Falling face-first into frozen mud, disbelieving. Stupefied.
Taste of salt and copper on his tongue. Sticky on his lips. Those same lips he’d pressed to hers, sighing and laughing and whispering in the dark.
Together.
In the dark …
39
AN ORCHESTRA OF BONE AND BLOOD
Iron-thrower smoke curled in the air. Bo and Maseo lay twitching in a puddle of their own ruins. Kin roared, raised his fist. And Kensai lifted the iron-thrower, and blew a hole clean through the boy’s leg.
The pain was breathtaking, bright and sickening, an unwanted scream spilling from his lips as he fell, crashing onto steel mesh smeared with his friends’ blood. Staring into their sightless eyes, the whites ruptured, filling slowly with red. He clutched his leg, rolling on the floor, crimson painting the brass on his thigh.
“Understand me, Kin-san.” Kensai loomed above him. “I will spare your life. To drag you before the First Bloom as proof of the Inquisition’s fallibility—their feeble prognostications and their Chamber of Smoke. For if you are the one they hold up as Tojo’s successor, everything they have ever said is suspect. But simply because I need you alive, does not mean I need you whole. And nothing would please me more than seeing just how much of you we could lose before we lose you entirely.”
Kin clutched his leg, eyes locked on Kensai’s.
“How did you know?”
“You were betrayed,” Kensai sneered. “By the one nearest and dearest to you.”
Kin blinked, mind racing. Kensai leaned down with a labored hiss and fumbled at the releases on Kin’s helmet, pulled it away, staring at the boy’s naked face.
“It was you, Kin-san. No matter what the Inquisition murmured in their smoke-drunk haze, I have known you for a traitor ever since you returned from the Iishi. I know your true self. I know the words you have whispered in the long quiet of the night.”
Kensai made a fist, pistons hissing, an explosion of pale sparks filling the air as he tore the mechabacus from Kin’s chest. The boy gasped in agony as the input jacks were ripped from his skin, the Second Bloom rummaging in the machine’s guts until he produced a coiled length of wire, a small transmitter, the black button stud of a tiny microphone.
“I have heard them.”
Kin groaned, hands pressed to the holes torn in his chest.
“Tell me,” Kensai said. “Did you plant the bomb in my quarters yourself?”
Kin hissed, blood in his mouth, “Hai.”
“I should have known. And yet I live. A failure to the last.”
“I didn’t want to kill you, Uncle. I don’t want anyone to die who doesn’t have to.”
“Ah, such mercy, Kin-san. But what of Ayane? Have you spared a thought for what became of her? Your friend Daichi? Tell me, when you pulled the trigger at his head, you had no idea the iron-thrower was empty, did you?”
“… No.”
“And you would have killed him all the same. Killed almost anyone. Sacrificed almost anything. Just for the chance to be here, am I right?”
“The lotus must burn. The needs of many outweigh the needs of one.”
“Except if she is the one. Your precious Yukiko. And perhaps yourself. Everything else is expendable, am I right? Those soldiers outside you planned to incinerate. The brothers aboard this vessel who trusted you. I’m sure you could happily throw the whole world away if you and she were standing together in the final chapter. And you call me monster.”
Kin lashed out at Kensai’s shin with his good leg. Metal kissed, the dull whunng of brass drums. The Second Bloom staggered, clutching the railing to stop his fall. Lotusmen descended, punching, kicking. Kensai seized Kin’s collar and slapped him, gauntlet ringing on breaking skin. A Lotusman stepped forward, concern underscoring his rasp.
“Shateigashira, your wounds … If you exert yourself…”
Kensai still glared at Kin, his perfect, childlike face devoid of rancor. But his voice was black, poisonous, like the snow falling all around them.
“The things we do for love,” he wheezed. “The things it does to us…”
Kensai released his hold, allowed Kin to slump to the deck. Standing with a smooth hiss of gears, he turned to his lackeys, breath rattling in his lungs.
“He is unworthy of his skin.”
The Lotusmen swarmed, snapping the release clasps and tearing the atmos-suit from Kin’s body. They were intentionally cruel, twisting into the bayonet fixtures at his wrists and spine, tearing them out, bruises and blood behind. Kin refused to groan—unwilling to give the bastard looming over him the satisfaction.
An Artificer turned from his console, bowing in apology.
“Forgiveness, Second Bloom, weapons systems are back online.”