Kensai’s hollow laughter.
“You draw chainblades against me? I, who provide the chi that fuels them? I, who designed the colossus you lead to the Iishi?” The Shateigashira chuckled behind that perfect, boyish mask. “The Kagé incinerated your fleet when they burned Kigen harbor, Daimyo. You cannot even move your troops without us, let alone fight when you get there.”
“The iron rail still runs. Our forces can head north by train.”
“And who do you suppose fuels them?” Kensai shook his head. “Put your swords aside, children, and remember what you are.”
“We are warriors of the Tiger clan. We are samurai!”
“Above and beyond anything else you may be,” Kensai sighed, “you are ours.”
Hiro’s jaw was clenched tight, his fists tighter. But at last, he glanced at his men, cut the air with his hand. With agonizing slowness, each samurai removed his gauntlet, blooded the drawn steel, then sheathed his blade. Kensai watched, expression hidden behind that impassive boy’s face. His voice was the rasp of a thousand lotusflies.
“It was a stirring speech you made at Lady Aisha’s pyre, Daimyo. But the time for pageantry is over. The Stormdancer poses a threat to this nation that cannot be overstated. In the space of weeks, she has turned the populace to rebellion and this nation’s capital to ashes. But do not believe this Shōgunate’s problems will simply disappear once she is dead. If you do not care for your country’s future, at least have the sense to obey those who do.”
His eyes burned bloody red, dying stars in a sky of brass.
“Are you hearing me, Hiro-san?”
Hiro was staring at his clockwork arm. The ball-joint fingers outstretched, iron-gray tendons now painted bone-white. The color of death. The death awaiting him at the end of this road. The death of honor. Of the Way. Of the girl who once thought him her love.
“… I hear you.”
“The sooner you rendezvous with the Earthcrusher, the sooner it marches,” Kensai said. “And from then? Fifteen days.”
Bone-white metal curled into a fist.
He nodded.
“Fifteen days.”
3
SHEDDING SKIN
With every breath dragged over his teeth, pain flared like sunlight on broken glass. Daichi coughed, a handful of wet sputters leaving a black taste on his tongue. He was slumped in an iron chair inside a cell with no windows, manacles cutting into his wrists, stink of chi filling his broken nose. The thrum of countless engines vibrated through the floor.
How long had he been here? Days? Weeks? His stomach so empty it no longer growled, head still ringing from his last beating. But he hadn’t broken. Hadn’t begged. Not yet, anyway.
Only a matter of time, he knew. With enough raindrops, even mountains became sand. But the blacklung was working him too, in the long and quiet dark between one beating and the next. Even as the earthquakes shivered the walls around him, painting his skin with dust. Even when the Lotusmen weren’t grinding him closer to his ending, the enemy inside his body was gathering its forces all the same. He wondered who would prove the victor in that race.
He had a favorite, to be sure.
The cell door opened, a shear of painful light cutting across yellow stone. Heavy iron boots rang on the floor, the heartbeat drumming of heel and toe mixed with the song of clockwork skins. How many had come to beat him this time? Four? Five?
Did it matter?
He felt smooth fingers pressing his pulse, pulling back his eyelids. He caught an impression of long, silvered arms, bloody eyes in a featureless face. A wasp-waist. Glossy skin. Noises, like an orchestra of insect parts.
“How is he?”
A male’s voice, deep and growling. Daichi peered through the shifting haze, saw a face he recognized from years past. A boy-child’s visage in burnished brass, iron cable squirming from open, frozen lips. The Voice of Kigen City—Second Bloom Kensai himself.
The lord of flies had come to the feast at last.
“He is weak, Shateigashira.” A female’s voice, thin and sibilant. “Malnourished, dehydrated and concussed. I imagine he is in considerable pain.”
“We can do better than ‘considerable,’ surely?”
“We see only pointlessness in this, Shateigashira.”
A soft voice, as of a man murmuring in his sleep. Daichi squinted at the one who spoke, caught the impression of a small man in dark cloth. A black breather shaped like a grin was affixed over his mouth, hissing plumes of sweet smoke, but to Daichi’s surprise, the man’s face was otherwise uncovered. His eyes were so bloodshot, the whites were simply red. The room seemed to grow darker when Daichi looked at him.
“I will judge what is and is not pointless here, Inquisitor,” came Kensai’s reply. “I am still Second Bloom of this chapterhouse.”
“The boy has brought us this man as a gift. Is that not proof enough of loyalty?”