“Let’s go,” slurred the boy with the crooked face.
Yoshi reached out to the flint-black eyes stretched across the city, the thousand mongrel shapes in alleys and on corners, seeing all. The men in iron breastplates converging from north and east. The shapes in glittering brass, blue-black plumes trailing east to the chapterhouse that had spit them into the air. And he grabbed the boy who’d spoken to the crowd, pulling him up short as he turned to run.
“No,” Yoshi said. “That’s the way they’re coming from.”
The six rebels stared hard, eyes drifting from the iron-thrower still smoking in his hand to the Purifier whose brains he’d splattered across the cobbles.
“Do I know you?” said the boy.
“No, Kagé boy.” Yoshi tipped his hat. “But I know you. And Yukiko. And Kaori. And pretty little Michi. You and yours, all.”
The three boys blinked in amazement, shared a handful of confused glances.
“Time enough for the chit and the chat later, friends.”
Yoshi nodded south, back toward Docktown.
“For now, follow me.”
31
SEEING AND BELIEVING
The tent was as big as any house Hana had seen. A small palace suspended by poles as broad as tree trunks, the floor covered in dirty rugs and furs, fire burning bright in a pit of blackened stones. She blinked in the gloom, scarcely remembering to pull off her goggles as her eye adjusted to the darkness. A faint pink glow spilled into the dark as the storm swelled outside.
Hushed whispers. Hungry. Feminine.
Piotr stood behind her, the gaijin called Aleksandar beside her. It was still too much to think of him as her uncle. Too bizarre to look him in the face and see her own eyes, Yoshi’s lopsided smile. She’d left Kaiah standing watch outside, glaring at the ten thousand warriors the way a cat watches a legion of hungry mice.
- WALK CAREFULLY, HANA. -
Don’t worry. If I need you, I’ll call in a heartbeat.
She made out figures in the dark; a man in iron armor with a face too small for his brick-shaped head. He was surrounded by gaijin hammermen, wreathed in pelts of wolves and bears and beasts whose shape she didn’t know. At his feet sat six enormous hounds—the only living dogs she’d ever seen—growling softly. She held up her hand, touched their thoughts, and they stilled at once, stubby tails between their legs. They whined to her about the dirty rain, the poisoned air, how they missed their birthlands. She pushed comfort into their minds, a smooth and soothing caramel warmth, laced with the scent of Iishi green.
She saw two figures near the fire, standing so close they touched. A woman, perhaps thirty, clad in the beaten brass skins of Guildsmen, lightning etched into cheeks and chin, glaring at Piotr as if she wanted to gut him. But it was the other who’d spoken: a woman near fifty, face patterned with claw scars, too symmetrical to have been the work of an actual beast. Ash-blond hair was entwined with bone and polished teeth, black feathers about her shoulders.
Aleksandar took Hana’s hand, and with a reassuring squeeze, brought her into the firelight. Dozens of stares followed her, but her own was fixed on the women before her, their right irises glowing with the same watered-rose as her own.
“Hana Mostovoi,” Aleksandar said, and Hana barely recognized the name as hers. “I present Holy Mother Natassja, and Sacred Sister Katya.”
Hana stood tall despite the fear, her palms soaked to the wrists. The older woman spoke words she couldn’t comprehend; a language tangled in faded snatches of childhood memory.
“The Holy Mother says you are welcome here,” Aleksandar said. “Daughter of Anya, daughter of Sascha, daughter of Darya, Matriarch of House Mostovoi.”
“Gods above…” she breathed.
Aleksandar translated and the women hissed between themselves, shaking their heads. The old one stepped forth, squeezing Hana’s arms, poking her ribs as if she were meat in a market stall. And finally, as the girl flinched beneath her touch, the old woman pulled down the leather patch covering Hana’s missing eye. She felt naked, heat rising in her cheeks.
- I AM HERE. FEAR NOTHING. NO ONE. -
The old woman spoke again, Aleksandar speaking afterward.
“The Holy Mother says you have the look of your grandmother. She sees her strength in you. Great things in your future. Great and terrible things.”
“My grandmother?” Hana glanced at Aleksandar.
“A great woman. A true daughter of the Goddess. And your mother after her. Zryachniye, we call them. Those who See.”
“See what?”
“Each is different.” Aleksandar nodded to the fierce woman wearing the Lotusmen skin. “Sister Katya sees the riddle of the weather, sunlight and stormpulse. The Holy Mother what may come, and what should not.”
“Piotr said your ruler was Sighted too.”
“Imperatritsa,” Aleksandar nodded.
“What does she see?”
“The truth of men’s souls.”