TORR …
- THIS IS WHAT YOU WROUGHT, KINSLAYER. YOU AND YOUR COWARDICE. YOUR PRECIOUS LAW. NO JUSTICE. NO PEACE. JUST THIS. -
Buruu hung his head. Thunder filling the skies. Rain falling heavier. Yukiko looked at him, folded down upon himself, misery written in every line, every curve. She reached out with herself, pouring her warmth into him. No judgment, no anger, just love—the same unquestioning love he’d always given her. None of it mattered. She was his and he was hers, from now until world’s ending, and nothing would change that.
I love you, Buruu.
Yukiko stepped closer, black rain falling in earnest now. She knew she should get out from under it, that it would scald her. But Buruu sat beneath it, bent and thoroughly wretched.
Do you hear me? I love you.
I AM SORRY.
It’s all right.
NO.
He climbed to his feet, spread his wings with a song of metal and canvas mesh, the iridescent frame creaking like old bones. He shook himself like a hound might, black water spilling from his flanks, eyes turning skyward.
NO, IT IS NOT.
With a single leap, he tore up into the air, pounding at the rain with his ironclad wings. Up into the black, over the fortress walls as she called after him, his warmth fading as the distance between them grew. His sorrow lingered in her mind, a sour taste on her tongue, and she turned to glare at Kaiah. The beast stared back, prowling in from the rain to take shelter with Hana and the wide-eyed servants on the verandah. Yukiko snatched up Buruu’s severed feather and ran under cover, skin stained with black, already beginning to tingle.
She stared at the pair for a moment, Hana with her arm about Kaiah’s neck, three eyes staring in silent challenge. And without a word, Yukiko stalked back to her room, looking for clean water to wash away the black rain, sorrow’s stain, the memory of those little shapes flung wingless and crying out into the void.
Her hand strayed to her stomach. The dread she found curled there. Rain pounding like mallets on the bleached tiles overhead, like a heartbeat, like the pulse beneath her skin.
And there she sat, hours in the dark, turning the feather over and over in her hands, waiting for Buruu to return.
Wondering if he ever would.
17
EARTHCRUSHER RISING
“Do you remember our chess game?” Kin stared at the old man across the embers, the fire burning in tired, steel-gray. “What you told me?”
Daichi stared back, unblinking, cold and reptilian. Wheels within wheels, weather-beaten and aged, weighed down by guilt and responsibility and the lives of those who needed him. Now more than ever. Now, when he was at his weakest.
A slow nod, black stains on his lips. “I do.”
“Then we need to talk.”
He nodded to the old man’s daughter.
“Alone.”
*
Blood in his mouth. Crawling on his tongue. Tasting death.
Daichi bent double, hugging himself as the coughing fit seized him, digging fingers into his gut, his throat, laughing somewhere in back of his mind. There was something altogether terrifying about living this way—knowing each inhalation could be the one that set it off. This pain. This helplessness. Living each moment afraid to breathe, the very motion that kept you living. Until you realize this wasn’t living at all. This was just waiting to die.
No idea how long it lasted. No thought throughout, save that he wanted it to stop, please, make it stop. A just punishment he knew, this disease, twisting him on the cell floor and painting his palms black. He deserved it, for all he’d done. Daiyakawa village. Yukiko’s pregnant mother, gods … how had he ever been a man who thought such deeds righteous?
This was his to cherish. Reward for faithful service to a regime built on murder and lies. He knew that. He understood. But in the grip of those seizures, he couldn’t help but wish it over. To stand before the Judge of the Hells, and then, to kneel before the Endsinger on her throne of bones. To wander in the Yomi underworld as a hungry ghost, utterly damned for all time.
It could not be worse than this …
The coughing stopped, somewhere after an eternity and before forever. Silence fell, edged with humming sky-ship engines, vibrations creeping through the brig floor. And looking up through the cell bars, he saw them—three men with bloodshot eyes, swathed in black, the light dimming around them.
“You sound ill,” the foremost said; a little man staring at his own outstretched fingers.
Daichi held back lunatic laughter for fear he might start coughing again.
“Some would say.”
“Do you believe in gods, Daichi-san? In heavens and hells?”
“In Storm and Sun and Moon?” whispered the second.
“In the great benevolent Maker and his divine order?” asked the third.
“Of course,” he nodded.
“Will you walk, or shall we carry you?”
“Where?”