“Kaori hates Kin. She wants him dead more than I…”
The general stroked his beard. “Seems this boy and your Daichi formulated a plan between them. A stratagem unknown even to Daichi’s daughter. A ruse to get the boy aboard the Earthcrusher and stop it from within.”
Ginjiro glanced up at the lopsided goliath, then back at the bare forty feet of ground between the machine and the inner walls of Kitsune-jō.
“Fortunately for us, it seems…”
… COULD IT BE?
“That’s impossible…”
“Says the lowborn girl leading a pack of thunder tigers.”
Yukiko’s katana fell from nerveless fingers. She looked at Kin, anger slipping away as she searched his thoughts. All of it there for her to see, if only she’d taken the time to look. Kin and Daichi hunched over their chess game. His infiltration of Chapterhouse Kigen, then the Earthcrusher itself. The agony of his burns, the ’thrower wound in his thigh, all he’d risked and suffered laid out in the glittering pathways of his mind. But above all, reflected in the tears in both their eyes was the moment she’d accused him of betrayal in Kigen arena. When she’d thought Kin sold her to Yoritomo and been proven wrong, now proven so again, his words then echoing now in her thoughts, like a rusted knife in her chest.
“I gave you my word. I gave Buruu his wings. I would never betray you, Yukiko. Never.”
“Oh gods, Kin…”
She released her hold on his body, and he sagged, the heat of his burns flaring blood-red in his mind. Despite it all, he still stood, eyes filled not with the pain of his body, but the pain of a single thought—that again, and despite everything he’d done, she’d thought the worst of him.
She stepped toward him, hands fluttering helplessly at her sides.
“Oh gods, Kin, I’m so sorry…”
The wind howled in the frozen gulf between them. A single foot and a thousand miles wide.
He looked down at the swelling at her midriff, wiped the tears from his eyes.
“So am I…”
47
A GRAND WAY TO DIE
THERE IS NO TIME NOW, FOR GRIEF.
They sat perched on the highest point in Yama city—the lopsided head of the Earthcrusher—looking out over the ruins of the Kitsune capital. Events of the last hour played over and over in her mind; a broken sound-box breathing a white-noise hum.
She’d marched straight into the dungeons, Hana at her side, intent on questioning the Inquisitor and finding some truth in all this. But the warrens had collapsed in the earthquake following the destruction of First House; the Inquisitor’s cell and dozens of others had been buried under tons of fresh rubble. Yukiko had stood before the wall of crumbled masonry, felt beyond the ruins with the Kenning, searching for those pitch-black eyes, that empty smile, any sign of life. She found nothing. A desolation, devoid even of corpse-rats. Despair in her heart, she realized any answers the Inquisitor held had died with him.
General Ginjiro had ordered the helpless Guildsmen removed from the Earthcrusher and placed under lock and key. Kin had begged his brethren be taken to the hospice, and with no dungeons to lock them inside, the general had acquiesced. Kin had overseen the operation despite his injuries, unplugging each Guildsman from their mechabacus by hand, ending their convulsions, helping them to their feet, bleary-eyed and trembling. It was only after the last Guildsman had been removed that he’d allowed himself to be taken for treatment.
All the while, he’d not said a word to her.
She’d returned to the crash-site of the Honorable Death, unsurprised to find Hiro gone. Tears smudging her face, she’d collected Michi’s body, winging her back to Kitsune-jō. She was laid in the gardens beneath white sheets and black snow—just one among hundreds, their ranks swelling by the second.
Yukiko knew they’d have to deal with the gaijin soon to collect Akihito—or at least what was left of him. But for the moment, it was all she could do to stop it spilling out of her in a flood without ceasing. Here in the quiet, loss amplified by the thunder tigers mourning their fallen brethren, the girl circling astride Kaiah above, mourning her love.
Grief.
SORROW WASTES TIME WE DO NOT HAVE.
I can’t help it, Buruu. If anyone was going to make it through this, I thought it would be Michi. She was fiercer than a thousand sea dragons. And gods, poor Akihito …
ALL THIS WAS PRELUDE. THE REAL BATTLE HAS NOT EVEN BEGUN.
She stepped into the Kenning and felt her way south, a headache kick-starting itself somewhere in the back of her skull. She could sense the impossible darkness swelling around the Stain’s ruins, writhing, seething, the faintest of echoes in her mind, a broken, skull-bending rhythm trying to draw her in. She pulled herself back into her brother’s warmth. Shivering.
You can’t even imagine what’s growing down there …