Pulling Eiko to her feet, she manhandled the girl to the rope and screamed to get up, climb, go, just go. At the doorway, she saw Maro flying backward in a spray of blood as a smoking wheel kick nearly took his head off his shoulders. Kaori ripped her satchel off her back, reaching inside to arm her remaining explosives. With a shapeless cry she hurled them toward the Inquisitors, leaping up the rope as a blossom of seething fire unfurled at her back.
The blast wave smashed her against the wall and she almost slipped, palms torn as she hauled herself skyward. She could see Eiko climbing slowly, her father coughing and spitting black. Claxons screamed. Running footsteps. Roaring engines.
She felt tension on the rope below, looked down into a smoldering face; an Inquisitor climbing toward her like a twisted, smoking monkey. Drawing her wakizashi, she slashed the rope below her, and the man fell twenty feet, splashing onto the stone as a cloud of smoke, reforming and glaring up with empty, bloodshot eyes. She heard a distorted voice above, looking up with a sinking heart as Lotusmen landed on the dome’s lip. Silhouetted against the sky, peering down with glowing, bloody eyes, patient as spiders for her to crawl into their arms.
Daichi had stopped, spinning in place, Eiko beneath him. More Inquisitors gathered below. Kaori grit her teeth, knuckles white, staring down at her death.
“I am sorry, Daughter,” Daichi coughed. “I did not want you here.”
“You should have trusted me, Father. Neither of us had to be here.”
“Not here, in this place,” Daichi rasped. “In this life. I would not … have chosen this for you. I would have seen you happy … far away from all this.”
She pictured the timers on the explosives in the chi reservoirs, ticking down.
Second.
By second.
By second.
“Fear not, Father.” A small smile. “Soon we’ll both be far away.”
*
“Fucking hells…”
Yukiko cursed as the Earthcrusher shook off the Kitsune suicide attacks, began lumbering toward Kitsune-jō again. Its hull was blackened and smoking, its head buckled, but still, it marched. Hana and Kaiah circled close by, along with the three remaining bucks from the Everstorm pack, Sukaa still among them. The black was dripping blood, green eyes alight with the thrill of the kill, glancing at Yukiko with something close to hunger.
“Izanagi’s balls, what does it take to stop this thing?” Hana shouted.
Yukiko turned her mind from Torr’s son, back to the problem at hand.
“There’s nothing for it! I have to get inside! If I can see the pilot, I can kill him!”
YOU SAW WHAT HAPPENED TO MY BRETHREN.
“And how the hells do we get you inside it?” Hana’s shout echoed Buruu’s thoughts. “Those iron-throwers will shred us before we get close!”
… YUKIKO, BEHIND US.
She felt warning flicker across Sukaa’s mind, Kaiah roaring and swooping about as shapes coalesced out of the pall of smoke and black snow. Four Guild ironclads, battle-scarred and limping. Hulls torn by grappling irons, inflatables scored by flame, boards washed with blood. But she could see them on the decks, demon helms painted bone-white.
The last remnant of the Kazumitsu Elite, chainswords drawn, screaming challenge as they saw her—slayer of Shōguns, ender of dynasties. And standing on the bow of the largest ship, face caked with ashes and spattered blood, he stood tall and fierce as tigers.
Hiro …
INDEED.
As Buruu wheeled about, her hand strayed to her belly, the lives swelling inside her. So tiny. So strong. Filling her with power enough to wake ancient dragons, to feel the minds of every soldier in this battle, to swim in the thoughts of every thunder tiger floating above the butchery. A part of her, every bit as much as the heart in her chest.
But part of him too?
She stared across smoke-stained skies, remembering how she’d felt the first time she’d seen him. Heart in her sandals. Those sea-green eyes, nothing like the color of the sea at all. Because the oceans were red as blood, just like the poisoned skies. And the Guild who’d ruined it all was the same Guild propping Hiro on his splintered throne, who armed the Tora soldiers committing butchery in the city below, who built that towering goliath just minutes away from turning the Kitsune palace to rubble.
They his masters, and he their slave.
But still …
WE MUST MAKE SURE THIS TIME.
Meaning what?
MEANING WE DO NOT SIMPLY TAKE HIS ARM.
Buruu growled low and long, eyes locked on the Tiger Daimyo.
WE TAKE HIS HEAD.