“Good-bye, Hiro…”
She could feel everything.
“Gods, what’s happening to me?”
3
THE FIRST AND ONLY REASON
Yukiko’s dreams were of burning ironclads.
A golden throne and a boy with sea-green eyes.
Smiling at her.
Her sunlit hours were all motion. Visiting Kin in the infirmary. Speaking with the Kagé council about the ironclad attack. Talks of Hiro’s wedding. Concern over the flurry of small, warm bodies that had dashed themselves to dying against her bedroom walls. Halfhearted assurances that all was well. Disbelieving stares.
The ache in her skull swelled by the day—the thoughts of the surrounding wildlife encroaching just a fraction further, a thousand splinters digging ever deeper. But every night, she made it stop, reaching for the saké bottle to dull it all. A blunt force trauma knocking her wonderfully senseless, burning mouthfuls submerging her beneath a merciful, velvet silence.
She would sit with the bottle in her hands, fighting the urge to hurl it into the wall. To watch it shatter into a thousand pieces. To ruin something beyond repair.
To unmake.
Buruu’s concern was a constant white noise inside her skull. But if he thought less of her as he watched her retching up the dregs every morning, she felt no trace of it inside his mind.
Hauling herself from her bed in the splintering light of the third day, the ache flared inside her head; an old friend waiting in the wings with open arms. Liquor dregs sloshed inside her empty innards, hangover fingers buried in her skull all the way to the knuckles. She sat at breakfast with the rest of the village, avoiding Daichi’s watchful stare, swallowing her puke like medicine. It was almost midday before she made it to the infirmary, asked Old Mari if Kin would be well enough to take a walk with her.
She’d been putting this off for far too long.
The graveyard stood in a quiet clearing, guarded by ancient sugi trees. The sparks of a hundred tiny lives burned around her, the heat and pulse of Buruu beside her so overpowering it was almost nauseating. The forest was a smudge against sleep-gummed lashes, eyelids made of sand, pickaxes in her throbbing skull. She remembered the saké blurring the pain as Daichi burned away her tattoo, sensation fading to oblivion. She remembered her father, drowning his own gift in smoke and drink.
Don’t want it.
A sigh.
Just need it.
She looked down at the marker at her feet, at his name carved deep into the gravestone.
I think I understand you more and more each day, Father.
Her mouth was dry, tongue like ash. The Kenning burned in her mind alongside the memory of dozens of small, broken bodies scattered around the tree cradling her room. Wind moaned through the fading green, the Thunder God Raijin pounding on his drums above the gentle rain. Incense smoldered in the shrine, thin smoke weaving toward the heavens.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Kin stood a few paces away, knife-bright eyes locked on hers, rain beading upon his lashes. He was clad in gray, his feet and arm wrapped in fresh bandages, fading burn scars etched on his throat and chin. She saw his flight from Kigen had taken its toll, turned him lean and hard, tanned his sun-starved skin. His once-shaved skull was now covered in dark stubble, short sleeves showing taut muscle and the strange metallic bayonet fixtures studding his flesh. Yukiko remembered unplugging him from his atmos-suit after he’d been burned, pulling black, snaking cables from his flesh, the plugs gaping like hungry mouths. All that remained of his suit now was a brass belt around his waist, stuffed with an assortment of tools and instrumentation—the only component he’d salvaged from the metal skin he’d worn for most of his life.
“No,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Your father loved you, Yukiko. And he knew you loved him before the end.”
“That won’t bring him back.”
“No. It won’t. But you can make his death mean something anyway.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it, Kin. Please.”
He chewed his lip, eyes to the ground. “You seem … different somehow. Changed. What you did to those ships the other day…”
“I don’t really want to talk about that either.”
She knelt near the grave, dug her fingers into the soil. Dark earth on pale skin, rain rolling down her cheeks instead of the tears she should be crying. She could see Yoritomo’s face, eyes narrowed above the iron-thrower, hear his voice ringing inside her head.
“All you possess, I allow you to have. All you are, I allow you to be.”
Her hands curled into fists, eyes closed tight. She stood, face to the sky, cool rain on her cheeks washing none of it away. Buruu stretched his wings, shook himself like a soggy hound. His thoughts were so loud they made her wince.
YOU MUST LET HIM GO, YUKIKO.
I can’t just forget what’s happened, Buruu.