“Yoshi?” His heart nearly broke at the terror in her voice. “Yoshi, what’s happening?”
“It’s all right, sis.” He tried to keep his own voice from rising upward toward hysteria. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Did you hear that, pretty one?” Seimi leaned close, stared into her good eye. “Your thieving whoreson brother said it’ll be all right. Does that still your pounding heart?”
“You bastards, you let her go! She has nothing to do with this!”
Hana was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. She struggled against the men holding her, but they were twice her size, all inked muscle and gap-toothed grins. Seimi ran one hand down her throat, parted the collar of her tunic. A hungry stare caught on the golden amulet draped around her neck. A tiny stag with three crescent horns. Glaring.
“Stop.”
The voice was low-pitched. Ironclad.
Soft footsteps. Measured breath. A man stepped into the light. Short. Tanned. Simply dressed. Graying hair swept back from sharp brows. Staring at Yoshi with empty, black eyes.
“Do you know who I am?”
“No.” Yoshi gasped for breath. “No, I don’t.”
He stepped closer, hovering just inches away. Yoshi could see the pores in his skin, the lines at the corners of those bottomless eyes. There was no anger—not even a hint of malice in the man’s voice.
“I am the man who paid your rent. Paid the tailor who made your clothes. The artiste who inked your skin. I paid for your smoke. Your drink. I am the man whose face you spit in, every time you spent one of those stolen coins.”
“I’m sorry.” Yoshi swallowed. “I’m sorry, but please, my sister didn’t have anything to do with this, please just—”
“What is your name?”
“… Yoshi.”
“I am the Gentleman.” The man was staring at Yoshi’s inkless arm. “You are lowborn?”
“Hai.”
“It explains much.” The Gentleman paced in a long, slow circle around Yoshi. “Do you know how we differ, Yoshi-san?”
“No…”
“I am Burakumin, just like you. A boy born with nothing, no clan, no family, no name. And like you, I was forced to do terrible things, just to survive this place.” The Gentleman shook his head. “The things I have done, Yoshi-san. The things I will do…”
The man ceased pacing, looked Yoshi in the eye.
“But I am no thief. Everything I have, I bought with sweat and blood. I had the grace to look into men’s eyes as I took everything they had. That is the difference between us. Why I stand here, and you hang there. Without your little hand-cannon.” As the Gentleman spoke, he moved his face an inch or two closer to Yoshi’s with every word. “You. Are. A. Coward.”
Yoshi said nothing, mind awhirl. Desperate. Looking for something. Anything. Some way out of this hole, this pit he’d dragged her into. Gods, not Hana, please …
“You say your sister is blameless?” The Gentleman looked at her, then back to Yoshi. “That she knew nothing of your transgressions against the Scorpion Children?”
Sweat rolled down Yoshi’s face, blood in his eyes. “Nothing.”
“And you would have me let her go?”
“She doesn’t deserve any of this.” He licked at split lips. “Do what you want to me. I deserve it for what I did. But she doesn’t deserve to see it.”
The Gentleman stared, head tilted as if listening to hidden voices.
“I suppose, Yoshi-san, you are right. She doesn’t deserve to see this at all.”
Relief flooded through Yoshi and he almost sobbed, babbling thanks as the Gentleman turned away. And as he watched, the little man stepped up to Seimi and took the long-nosed pliers from his calloused hands, and in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the Gentleman leaned in close and plucked Hana’s eye from her socket.
Her scream filled the air, louder than Yoshi could have thought possible. He found his own voice caught up with hers, a shapeless roar of hatred, thrashing against the ropes binding him, spitting and screaming and flailing. The Gentleman touched the men holding Hana and they dropped her to the floor. She brought her bound hands up to her face and curled into a ball and screamed, screamed until Yoshi thought his heart would break. Tears blurred his sight, his captors reduced to smudges in the glare, the scent of smoke filling his lungs.
“You bastard!” he screamed. “You fucking bastard!”
The Gentleman dropped the pliers as if disgusted by them. They hit concrete with a dull, metallic clang. He drew a kerchief from his uwagi, cleaned the blood off his hands as he spoke with a slow and measured voice to Seimi.
“Release the girl when you are done. But this one?” The Gentleman looked Yoshi up and down. “I wish his suffering to be legendary. I wish Kigen to know, now and forever, the price of crossing the Scorpion Children. If you are an artiste, brother, let this boy’s flesh be the canvas upon which you paint your masterpiece. And when you are finished, you hang him on a wall in the Market Square for all the world to see. Do you understand me, Seimi-san?”