He felt his lips curl into a smile.
“Call me First Bloom.”
A cheer echoed in the dark, spilling from brass lips and iron lungs, an awful, shapeless roar that turned his insides upside down. He cut it off with a wave of his hand, voice ringing over the silence falling like a hammer. The smile grew wider, heart racing as he scrambled toward the light, the way out he could see, the final truth he’d always meant to speak in this waking dream.
He tore at the clasps about his neck, pulling off his helm and hurling it away. He could taste old chi and blood in the air, iron heavy on his tongue. He could hear the gasps below, the astonishment at seeing naked flesh beneath a brother’s skin.
“I am First Bloom, and this is my first and final command.” He looked among the multitude, his truth singing in his veins. “The Lotus Guild is ended. Disbanded. Forever. No more sealing ourselves off in suits of brass. No more filling the skies with poison, the rivers with tar, the earth with ashes. We will be part of this world. Not above it. Not outside it.
“No more Shatei. No more Blooms. No more Artificers or Lotusmen or Purifiers. Simply brothers and sisters. Orphans, all. United in fleeting grief at the death of our past, and hope at the birth of our future.”
The crowd hung motionless, petrified, the air crackling with electricity. Kin limped down the spiral stairwell, onto the machine room floor. He walked over to Shinji, Misaki beside him. He looked at them both, pleading, sweat burning the corners of his eyes.
“My name is Kin. Call me that, or brother, or nothing at all.”
Shinji looked to Misaki, clawed suddenly at the seals at his throat, compressed air escaping with a high-pitched sigh. He pulled the helm from his head, throwing it to the ground with a sharp bang. And grasping Kin’s hand, he nodded, pulling him into a fierce embrace.
“My name is Shinji,” he said. “Call me that, or brother, or nothing at all.”
Misaki was clawing at her face, tearing the membrane from her head, the light of her eyes dying in a pale burst of sparks. She turned to the crowd around her, offered her hand to a Lotusman beside her, searching that featureless mask with desperate, breathless hope.
“My name is Misaki. Call me that, or sister, or nothing at all.”
The Lotusman stood rooted to the spot, looking among his fellows, back and forth across that sea of faceless faces. Every bellows fell still, every heart catching in every chest, time itself slowing to a crawl and treading upon tiptoe for fear of it all. The air was smoke and cinder, iron and chi and blood, humming with possibility. And slowly, deliberately, the Lotusman popped the seals at his throat, lifting his helm away with both hands.
The flesh beneath was middle-aged, creased with time, thinning gray hair sheared to a shadow on his skull. His eyes were crouched in gray hollows and rimmed with tears.
“I have carried my father’s name for thirty years,” he said. “I have served this Guild longer still. It is all I have ever known. That skin is strong and flesh is weak.”
He looked down at his open palm, ensconced in leather and brass. And as the entire room watched in silence, the old man took Misaki’s hand, a trembling smile on his face.
“But I was born Shoujou. Call me that, or brother, or nothing at all.”
*
He’d thought him asleep at first.
Lying in his bed, head drooping slightly to one side. Kin had returned from the chapterhouse, so buoyed by elation that even the rising pain of his burns and the hole in his thigh barely slowed his step. His head still rang with names, unmasked faces, the hope and fear burning behind their eyes. He’d left Shinji to oversee work on the Earthcrusher, returning to the guest wing of Kitsune-jō. Ready to plead. To argue. To scream if need be.
“Uncle,” he said. “Wake up.”
He walked into the room, sitting beside him on the bed. It was then he noticed the faint stain seeping slowly through the sheets, peeling them back to find Kensai’s open wrists, a bloody knife, mattress soaked in scarlet.
“Uncle!”
Kin clutched the slashed wrists, roared for the guards, blood on his hands. Soldiers arrived, cursing, pushing Kin aside and trying to staunch the nonexistent flow. Kin backed into the corner, staring at the red across his palms, blinking mutely as the guards pounded on Kensai’s chest, trying to resuscitate the fallen Second Bloom.
“You’re too late,” he said.
Shaking his head. Tears in his eyes.
“Too late.”
50
THE VICIOUS HORIZON