And just like that, just for that, he swung.
Hana saw the bottle connect with her mother’s jaw, time slowing to a crawl, watching the spray of red and teeth. She felt something warm and sticky splash onto her cheek, saw her father’s face twisted beyond reason or recognition. Screaming he should have left her there, in her accursed homeland with her bastard people, and he flourished the stump where his sword hand had been and roared.
“Look what they took from me!” Face purpling, skin taut and blood-flushed. “Look at it! And all I have to show for it is you!”
He loomed over their mother, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, Hana saw rage burning in those brilliant blue eyes.
“You pig.” Mother’s words were slurred around her broken jaw. “You drunken slaver pig. Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea what I was?”
Spit on his lips as he raised the bottle again. “I know what you’re going to be…”
Yoshi opened his mouth to yell, rising from his knees, hands outstretched.
The bottle fell, a long, scything arc ending in her throat and a spray of blood, thick and hot and bright. And Hana did what any thirteen-year-old girl would have done at that moment.
She started screaming.
*
Explosions tore across the night, dragging Hana from her reverie, back into the world beyond the window glass. She saw the harbor was ablaze, firelight spray-painted across southern skies. Great walls of black cloud rumbled and crashed above the city, the smell of burning chi entwined with the growing promise of rain.
“Izanagi’s balls,” Yoshi shook his head. “Someone’s riled about not getting invited to the Shōgun’s wedding…”
Hana tried to shake off the dread, closed her eye, frowned. “I can’t see much. Can’t feel many rats around.”
“Fire is making the little ones nervous. Big ones are opening shop on a fresh corpse two blocks north. Dinnertime.”
Hana left her vantage point near the window, knelt by the table, rocking a little, back and forth. She stared at Yoshi’s straw hat, at the jagged, broken-bottle cut running through the brim. Refusing to remember.
“Where the hells is this boy?” Yoshi hissed.
“Maybe we could go look for him?”
“You fixing to go outside in all this?”
“Jurou’s been gone all day, Yoshi. Aren’t you worried?”
“Safe to say.”
Yoshi chewed a fingernail, falling mute. Hana looked toward the window again.
“Gods, it sounds like the whole city’s coming apart…”
She reached out again with the Kenning, felt dozens of tiny sparks converging to the north. She could feel their hunger, taste their stink at the corners of her mouth. She reached toward Daken, prowling western rooftops, just on the edge of word-range.
There’s a group of rats north of the hotel.
… so . .?
So be careful on the way back.
… i am a cat …
There’s a lot of them.
… meow . .?
All right, fine. If you get eaten, don’t bitch to me. What can you see?
… people running fighting men in white iron with growling swords …
Can I use your eyes?
… of course …
Lashes brushed her cheeks as she slipped behind Daken’s pupils. He was looking down into a cramped alley three floors below his perch, and she clutched the table, fighting off a sudden rush of vertigo. The docks around Kigen Bay were ablaze, black smoke and seething flames. The clouds were full of Phoenix sky-ships, darting and weaving like swallows, occasionally opening up with barrages of shuriken-thrower fire into alleys and houses.
chug!chug!chug!chug!
They could smell stagnant water, urine and trash below, ripe with flies’ eggs. Chi exhaust, ash and dust, the reek of pollution that had seeped into the city’s skin. And high above it all, drifting arm in arm with the smoke came the stink of charred fat. The reek of burning hair.
Hana could hear the crowd through his ears, roaring flames, ringing bells.
Be careful out there, little brother.
… still have one or two lives left …
She broke the contact with half a smile, mind drifting over the city. Feeling around one last time for corpse-rats, trying to catch a glimpse of the Kagé who must be behind these attacks. She found most of the Upside vermin gathered in that swarming knot two blocks north. They were a multitude, too grizzled to fear the flames, knuckle-deep in fresh meat and fighting amongst the guts. But a short spit from the edges of the feast, Hana felt a faint spark of distress.
The girl frowned. Pressed her lips into a bloodless line. Focusing tighter, she centered on the pain’s source. Felt the tear of broken glass in his insides, rolling onto his back, tail tucked between his legs as he screeched. Tasted his blood on his tongue, lolling from their mouths, clawing at their own belly to make the agony go away.
She pulled back, felt more of them—other fading sparks crawling into storm drains and writhing in the gutters. Rolling over and clawing at the sky, twisting into little balls of mangy fur and slowly turning cold.