“First Bloom’s name!”
The cry came from the gantry above Shinji’s head. Another Artificer stood there, bloody eye aglow, locked on the near-naked boy. The first Artificer looked up, caught sight of Shinji.
“Saboteurs!” it cried. “They’re here! Sound the alarm!”
Kin caught his breath, finger on the trigger.
Squeeze.
*
Standing in the fire, one foot in both worlds, eyes open wide.
Yukiko could see them—every one. She could feel them, their rage and their hate, clad in snow white, ashes on their faces. Servants of the great Yoritomo-no-miya. The last of his Elite. Killers, every one, and her death, their life’s only purpose.
She and Buruu landed on the pilot’s deck of the Honorable Death, splinters and cracking boards, sundered rope and rigging. Hiro stood before them, one arm of cold iron, the other hanging bloodied by his side. The Elite heard them land, turned to face them. Shouts of alarm. Swords drawn. Charging. All the world moving in slow motion.
The Honorable Death was losing altitude, hemorrhaging hydrogen from her inflatable. Yukiko surveyed the decks, boards awash with blood and bodies. Kitsune samurai and cloudwalkers and Elite. All of them brave in their own way. Each fighting for a belief, a truth, a reason. And some part of her wanted to respect that. To understand none of them were so different. That Daichi had once been like these men, and they too might only be a step away from seeing the world the way he did.
And then her eyes fell on the girl. Crumpled in a puddle against the railing. Dark hair hacked short, pale skin bled paler still, bee-stung lips parted as if to breathe. Except she wasn’t breathing. Or moving. She wasn’t anything at all.
“Michi…”
Too much.
Too much loss. Too much death. Too much taken from her. And if this were one of the grand old stories, and she the great hero in it, a noble stormdancer like Kitsune no Akira or Tora Takehiko, she might have found something inside to cling to. This would be the chapter where she’d find it in herself to show mercy, to cling to Bushido or honor or the knowledge that none of them were so different. None of them were truly “wrong.”
But this was not one of the grand old stories. And if she were a hero, Michi wouldn’t be dead. Akihito wouldn’t be dead. Or Aisha and Kasumi and her father. She would’ve saved them all. She could have saved them all. If she were a hero. But only if.
“No,” she breathed.
She reached into the Kenning, into the flames where the dragons writhed, tsunami and fire and flood. And she touched the minds of each man charging her down, their ashen faces twisted in hatred. Reaching out and wrapping them up in herself. Hands outstretched, fingers beckoning. On they came. Swords raised. Spitting curses. Murder uncoiling.
She closed her eyes.
She closed her fists.
And every one of them clutched his temples.
Bled from his eyes.
Collapsed upon the deck.
Every.
One.
Samurai and marines and cloudwalkers. Young and old. Living and breathing and thinking no more. Emptying the deck of every man who’d see her slain. Now slain in turn.
All save one.
Those eyes that had once held her spellbound, gleaming now like flat, polished glass. Face caked white, daubed the color of death; the same color they’d wrapped her father inside before they lit his funeral pyre. The same color they’d wrap Akihito and Michi in, presuming any of them survived this day.
DOOMDOOMDOOMDOOM.
“You killed her,” she said.
“Not I.” Hiro blanched at the ruins she’d made of his Elite. “My men.”
She could see Michi’s death in his mind, etched in something that tasted like regret. And as she stepped toward him, she saw Hiro’s eyes drift to her belly, the soft curve swelling under banded iron. Buruu’s growl shook the deck beneath them.
HE KNOWS.
“Michi told you. About them.”
“Hai.”
“So now you know.”
“Now I know.”
She reached across the space between them with her thoughts, slipping into his synapses, just a tweak to let him know she was there. He stifled a gasp, eyes widening as she pinched.
But not yet.
Buruu growled, low, tectonic, a wall of fire at her back.
FINISH HIM.
Soon.
WHILE YOU SAVOR THIS MOMENT, THE EARTHCRUSHER MARCHES.
We can’t stop the Earthcrusher, Buruu. We’d need a miracle.
KITSUNE LOOKS AFTER HIS OWN.
Akihito is dead. Michi is dead. Aisha, Daichi, Kasumi, my father. If this is Kitsune looking after me, I think I’d prefer if he left me the hells alone.
“Are you happy, Hiro?” She gestured at the battle raging across Yama. “It’s all for you. Every drop. Does it make you proud?”
“Proud?” Hiro laughed, short and bitter. “Gods, you never understood me, did you?”
“No. But I was just a girl. A girl who thought she was in love.”
“No more than I.”
“You betrayed me, Hiro.”
“And you betrayed me. When you betrayed my Lord Yoritomo.”