“Oh Gods…” Hana breathed.
A tiny flare of light; a bubble of flame, white hot. A split second of not-sound, nothing like silence. And then an explosion, a jagged shear of flame spreading faster than a brushfire on a summer’s day. Hana held up her hand to blot out the light, the Lotus Eater shrieking with a voice of breaking timber and burning hydrogen and dying men. The great ship plummeted downward, trailing a skyful of smoke, ending with a screaming, nose-first dive into a fallow field two miles south of Yama’s walls. The earth shook as the pair embraced like hateful lovers, the tremor lasting a good thirty seconds longer than it should have, dust and tiles skittering from the Yama rooftops and smashing on the cobbles below.
The rest of the Guild fleet tore away as fast as their engines would take them, south toward the Tōnan mountains and the fortress of First House.
He killed himself.
Hana’s eye was locked on the Lotus Eater’s ruins, the smoking hole in the earth now serving as a mass grave. Kaiah’s thoughts rumbled in her skull.
– WHAT? –
That Lotusman on the inflatable. He sacrificed himself to kill Yama’s Second Bloom.
– BRAVE. –
I wouldn’t call it brave. I’d call it sad.
She turned to Yukiko. “How could he do that?”
The Stormdancer’s eyes were fixed on the smoking wreckage, her face pale as ash. She seemed older then—the weight of the world smothering the girl whose skin she wore, leaving her weary beyond all years and sleep. She raised her voice above the howling wind.
“This is war, Hana,” she said. “It’s bloody and ugly and people are going to die. Maybe you. Maybe me. Hells, maybe no one here gets out alive.”
“Could you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Kill yourself like that? Walk gladly into the fire for a small victory?”
“I’m not sure there are small victories in a fight to the death. With stakes this high, every step closer to the finish is worth it.”
“But could you die for it? Knowing you’ll never see the end?”
Hana looked across the blackened skies to the girl on the back of her thunder tiger—this girl who’d slain a Shōgun, ended a dynasty, prompted a nation to rise. She saw Yukiko’s hand pressed to her stomach.
“I don’t know.”
The hand dropped to her side.
“I’m guessing we’ll find out before the song is sung.”
7
IN THE SHADOW OF COLOSSUS
Fifteen days.
Hiro stood on his bedchamber balcony, watching the city twitching below. The orchestra of engines and traffic and people was occasionally interrupted by a pitiful song—the sparrows who’d survived the Kagé attack, clipped feathers now singed from the fires that had almost gutted the Shōgun’s palace. No matter how he tried, Hiro couldn’t get the stink off his skin. He’d scrubbed so hard in the bathhouse last night the water was tinged red when he finished.
This city was a shell, people wandering the streets in a daze. Hiro had ordered the imperial coffers opened to alleviate the suffering, but the bakery lines still stretched around the block, prices spiraling higher as Chapterhouse Kigen pumped every drop of chi north to fuel the Earthcrusher. The black market was thriving, the yakuza gangs who ran it growing more daring by the day. And Hiro could spare no thought for any of it.
North. A fifteen-day march in the shadow of a colossus, into the depths of the Iishi mountains. An ending. To the weight of this false arm they’d drilled into his body, to this circlet of shame they’d placed on his head. Fifteen days would see the end of it all.
Gods, it seemed a lifetime.
Why did he still care? Why did the thought of choking the life out of her fill his dreams? He was dead already—the ashes of funeral offerings painted on his face every morning. Death’s hue painted onto the armor he’d worn with such pride in fleeting yesterdays. It had meant so much to him once. But what had Yukiko meant?
An infatuation was all it had really been. An intoxication faded in the light of next dawning. And yet, it had brought the nation to war. Clan against clan. Blood against blood. This avalanche that had started so small—with a tear-stained kiss after Yoritomo littered the arena with severed feathers. They were teenagers. Maker’s breath, they were children.
Who in the name of the gods did they think they were, to drag the nation to ruin?
The rap of soft knuckles on hard wood. The feather-light breath of his major-domo.
“Forgiveness, Daimyo. You have honored guests.”
“I am about to depart for the staging grounds and war. You wish me to have tea with some bureaucrat before I leave?”
“No, great Lord. Forgiveness but—”
“Who is it?” Hiro turned on his cowering servant. “Some fat neo-chōnin wailing about the rising cost of slaves?”
“Lord Tora Orochi.”
Hiro’s belly flopped into his boots, blood drying up in his veins. The world was suddenly several shades too bright. Too loud. Too real.
After all this time …