“What will I see?”
Aleksandar repeated the question, and the Holy Mother smiled and replied in Morcheban. The language didn’t seem as harsh in Hana’s ears anymore. Surrounded by it, she found a deep music in the cadence and tone, tangled impressions of younger days, her mother singing to her and Yoshi when Father was passed-out drunk— “The Holy Mother says that is for the Goddess to decide.”
“You said my mother was a daughter of these Sighted. But her eye didn’t glow.”
“The Goddess flows in our family,” Aleksandar said. “But she only manifests every few generations. Darya, your great-grandmother, she was Sighted. Priestess of our House. After many years of service, she left the Holy Order to take rule of House Mostovoi. To pass the gift of the Goddess to her unborn children. The bloodline had to be preserved.”
“I don’t understand…”
“You are daughter of a great tradition, Hana. Goddess-touched. We thought the Mostovoi bloodline broken. The gift is passed only to daughters. The hope of our House rested in your mother. My sister. When she was taken…” Aleksandar shook his head. “And now to find you amidst these murdering pigs, not only alive but Touched…” He caressed her right cheek, gentle as a first snow. “Goddess be praised, it is a miracle.”
He turned to the assembled gaijin, shouted some kind of prayer. The cry was repeated among the men, murmured by the priestesses. Each woman stepped forward and embraced Hana, kissing her cheeks and lips, glowing eyes warming loving smiles. Like long-lost sisters.
Like family.
“Gods, I don’t understand any of this,” Hana breathed.
Aleksandar took her hands, gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze.
“Understand at least that you are safe, my blood. That you are home.”
“I have a brother. Yoshi…”
“He will be welcome also. You are my blood, and I am yours. And when we have cleansed the slavers from this land, we will—”
“Cleansed?” Hana frowned. “What do you mean cleansed?”
“… When the Shimans are dead.”
“Dead? No, there are good people here—”
“Good people?” A frown. “Those people who stole our women and children? Who turned their island into a wasteland and now seek to steal ours? There is no goodness here, Hana.”
“No, Alek—” She frowned. “Uncle. Listen. There is evil here. A group called the Lotus Guild. A clan who bear the Tiger flag. They’re the ones who’ve driven us to war against you.”
“Us?” Aleksandar blinked. “Hana, you are not one of them—”
“There are good people here. A clan who stands against the Guild. People who are risking everything, preparing to fight the chi-mongers even now. You have to help them.”
Aleksandar glanced at his commander, the Holy Mother following the exchange with tilted head, Sister Katya beside her, swaying as if she heard hidden music.
“Help them?” Rage burned in his eyes. “Hana, we are here to annihilate them. To ensure they never steal another daughter. Another sister. Another son.”
Hana looked among the group—the glowing eyes of the Sighted, the flint-black stares of the warriors. And taking Aleksandar’s hand in her own, the Holy Mother’s in the other, she brought them to the fire’s edge and pulled them down beside her.
“You should get comfortable. This is going to be a long story…”
*
“You’re out of your godsdamned mind!”
The Blackbird stood on the deck of his ship, the fair Kurea, arms folded across his belly, broad and round as a drum. He was nose-to-nose with a furious, red-faced Akihito, refusing to bat an eyelid. Breath hung in frozen clouds between them, the drone of the ship’s engines underscoring their shouts. Michi leaned against the railing nearby, hands behind her back. Up here above the clouds, the skies were a brilliant, bloody red, but the temperature was still low enough to freeze the tears in her eyes. Wind draped her hair across her face, goggles spattered with frozen residue from the Kurea’s exhaust. Black ice gleamed on the boards under her feet.
Akihito and the Blackbird were both the size of small houses, rumbling like a couple of very angry motor-rickshaws. Akihito was pure muscle beneath his winter wools, but his leg would put him at a disadvantage if forced to brawl on the swaying deck. If the tiff turned violent, Michi honestly wasn’t sure which man she’d lay odds against.
“Hana is down there amongst those gaijin!” Akihito shouted. “We have to help her!”
The Blackbird crooked one eyebrow and spat, saliva crystallizing on the deck. “First off, you effete Phoenix bastard, nobody tells me what I ‘have to’ do on my own ship. Second, we don’t even know she’s down amongst those round-eye bastards—”