“Feel who?” he said.
“Every member of the Guild,” Tojo hissed. “The Lotusmen on their ironclads. Kensai in his little behemoth. The Inquisitors in this room, uncertainty battling with their faith. They wonder about me, you know. If I am truly … here. Where all this is heading. Do you not?”
Tojo stared around the room, at the shadows breathing their plumes of smoke. Hollow laughter spilled from his tentacled maw. The mechabacii clustered around his throne chittered.
“I could even feel your friend, Daichi-san. Little Kin. Before Kensai tore the mechabacus from his chest. I quite enjoyed it, lurking on the cusp of those thoughts. Such an oddity, that one. The Inquisition expects great things of him, when I am gone.”
Daichi could hear motion around him; men shifting their weight, as if discomfited.
“It would shame any of them to admit it, but they are glad it will be soon. I frighten them, you see. I see that which they do not. Cannot. Will not.”
Daichi was calculating the distance to the First Bloom, the unfathomable machines he could use to vault up the throne, reaching out and seizing that helm in his hands, twisting …
Gather your strength. Keep him talking.
“You can feel them in your head?” Daichi stifled a small cough. “Every Guildsman plugged into one of those accursed machines? How do you stand the noise?”
“With difficulty. But I have been doing this for … quite some time.”
“How long?”
“Centuries? Something akin … I used to tally the years when I was younger. It kept me sane. A countdown to rebirth. Until I realized the truth we all should know.”
“Truth?”
“What Will Be, Will Be.”
“Fatalism.” Daichi smothered a cough. “I know how that feels.”
“Every man who has seen the face of his death does. You and I are very much alike.”
“You have seen your death also?”
A slow, creaking nod. “When I was a young man. When first we used the lotus sacrament to see the Truth. My lungs full of smoke and my eyes full of tears.”
“And you have lived with that knowledge for two hundred years?”
“Lived?” Mirthless laughter. “I would not call it that. I have not lived since before the rise of the Shōgunate. Since the twenty-four clans were consumed by four zaibatsu. Since my family, my wife, my people were annihilated by the Kitsune. Serpents, crushed underheel.”
“I do not understand…”
“You will,” Tojo nodded. “We talk now for a time. We will feel like old friends before we speak our last to each other. Before you do what it is you do.”
“… And what is that?”
“Ah, the eternal question. ‘Why am I here?’”
“And?” Daichi frowned. “Why am I here?”
Tojo tilted his head, the smile plain in his voice.
“To bring my death, of course.”
*
“You would be the Kagé, I presume?”
Kaori stood stone-still, wakizashi poised at the leader’s throat. The False-Lifer’s silver razors were a hairbreadth from her jugular, carotid, eyes. Gleaming in the garish light, the echoes of dripping chi filling the spaces between each breath.
“You are the rebellion,” she said.
“But a few,” the woman replied. “We are legion.”
“As are we.”
“I count but three.”
“Count again.”
“You are the Kagé who remained in the Iishi.” The False-Lifer glanced at Botan and Maro. “The ones who refused to follow Yukiko to Yama. She told us about you.”
“I’m certain she did.”
“You came up through the pipeline system? I am impressed at your valor.”
“Coming from one such as you, that means absolutely nothing.”
“My name is Misaki.”
“I care as little for your name as your praise.”
“You would be Kaori? Yukiko told us of the betrayal. The one called Kin. Not all of us are like him.”
“You all look the same to me.”
“We all share similarities, it seems. Or are you here to admire the view?”
“We are here to burn the Guild’s heart out. To destroy this pit and all within.”
“Then we have common purpose. So why do we have blades poised at one another’s throats?”
Long silence, filled with distant claxons, rhythmic drips from chi-sodden clothes. Breath burning in her lungs, sweat in her eyes, blurring the world and all within. Misaki simply stared, blades hovering at Kaori’s throat, the breath of her brethren rasping through the bellows on their backs. The breath of living men. Living, thinking, feeling …
“Kaori…” Maro cleared his throat, his voice soft in the dark. “Perhaps there is wisdom in alliance. The explosives they planted speaks to the truth of their words.”
“Why are you here?” Kaori whispered to the Guildswoman. “Why are you here really?”
“To destroy this house.”
“That is a purpose. Not a reason.”