—CAME HERE TO AVOID MOTHERHOOD. NOT CODDLE A FULL GROWN LIKE A NEWBORN CUB.— You came out here so no one could mate with you?
—NEVER AGAIN, MONKEY-CHILD.—
The female’s mind burned with impossible heat.
—NEVER AGAIN.—
Well, you didn’t come far enough. Buruu could smell you days’ away.
—WIND BLOWS SOUTH HERE. TRUE ARASHITORA DO NOT FLY SOUTH.— What about the other male? He must have smelled you too?
—SO?—
So why did he attack us?
Laughter in her mind.
—HE IS MALE, MONKEY-CHILD.—
Well, my friend is hurt now. He can’t fly and can’t hunt.
—AND?—
And I’m asking you to help him. Please.
—NO.—
Why not?
—WILL NOT AID THE KINSLAYER.—
His name is Buruu.
—HE HAS FORSAKEN ANY RIGHT TO A NAME, YōKAI-KIN.— … You know him?
—BETTER THAN YOU.—
The contact broke; a bullwhip crack that left a searing trail of pain across her brow. Yukiko winced, wiping her nose on her shoulder, smearing blood across her lips and chin. Her skull ached as if it had been stomped underfoot, ears ringing with a steel-toe tune. She felt absolutely awful—“Like an oni had shit in her head,” her father would’ve said. And the thought of him washed over her in the dark, five days’ worth of fatigue crashing down with the weight of anvils, threatening to tip her over the precipice.
Don’t you dare cry.
She thought of him on his slab. Ashes caked on his swollen face. She thought of his last words, bleeding out into her arms in the skies above Kigen. She searched for the rage but could find none, tears welling instead, clotting her lashes, and she screwed her eyes shut as if she could stop them spilling over.
She reached out on instinct for Buruu; a reflex action, like she’d reach for a handhold if she felt herself falling. But there was almost nothing waiting for her; just a tiny blob of muddy heat in the cold, vast dark where he used to be, laced with the hunger of reptiles. And that was the last push that sent her sailing over the edge.
She curled up in the dark, like a child in womb’s black.
And she wept.
*
The smell of warm porridge and hot tea roused her from dreams of growling wind, and she woke to find the noise was the hunger in her own belly. Dim daylight shone beyond the tiny window, smeared storm-gray. Piotr was sitting beside the bed, metal tray on his lap, watching her intently with his one good eye.
As she blinked the grit from her lashes, he said something in his rolling, guttural language and reached over, pulling her uwagi up around her shoulders, covering her naked chest. She flinched away, cheeks burning, remembering the blinding outrage she’d felt as he pulled the tunic open, exposing her tattoo and all else besides.
What the hells was so important about the ink on my skin?
Piotr smoothed the tangle of hair from her face, offered a spoonful of porridge. As much as the way he looked at her was unsettling, the memory of her indignities still smoldering in her mind, the food smelled delicious. Her empty stomach murmured, and she swallowed her pride along with the first mouthful, wolfing down everything he gave her.
When she was finished, she tugged the bindings on her wrists and ankles, looked at them pointedly.
“Can you untie me?”
“He cannot.” Piotr scowled and shook his head. “Pretty girl.”
“Where am I going to go?”
Piotr touched her cheek, tucking stray hairs behind her ears. He gathered up the utensils and bowls, set them aside, leaned back in his chair. Reaching into his white coat, he retrieved his fish-shaped pipe, stuffing it with that same dried, brown herb.
“Better she not here.” He shook his head. “Better all.”
“You could let me go?” Yukiko pulled at the restraints again.
“Too late.” He lit the pipe with his flame-box, exhaled a cloud of ignition fumes into the air. “Is now coming she, they.”
“What?”
“Zryachniye,” he sighed. “Zryachniye.”
“How do you speak Shiman?” Yukiko titled her head. “Were you a merchant?”
Sadness and anger thickened his voice. “Prisoner.”
Realization arrived with a wave of nausea, and at last she understood the man’s animosity. The slap to her cheek. Scarred face, blinded eye, crippled leg.
Samurai believed it was better to commit seppuku than fall into enemy hands. A gaijin soldier who allowed himself to be captured would have been viewed as beneath contempt; a wretch without honor or worth. If Piotr had been a soldier captured by Shōgunate troops during the invasion, she could only imagine what he’d been through at her countrymen’s hands.
The man seemed an utter bastard. But nobody deserved to be tortured.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Sorry?” The gaijin sucked his pipe, breathed pale gray. “Save sorry for herself.”