WHY DO WE FALTER?
Buruu’s thoughts in her head, as always, echoing the deepest recesses of her own.
THE PHOENIX I UNDERSTAND. THERE WERE INNOCENTS ABOARD THAT SHIP. BUT HIRO WANTS YOU DEAD. THE GUILD BACK HIM TO THE HILT. THIS IS KILL OR BE KILLED, YUKIKO.
She struggled for breath, clawing her hair from her eyes.
And then what? If we kill him, the Guild will just choose another puppet. Another thrall.
THIS IS THE PATH YOU CHOSE. THIS IS THE RIVER OF BLOOD I PROMISED.
And weren’t you afraid I would drown in it?
ALL YOU NEED DO IS DIVE IN AND SWIM.
I …
She wiped her fist across her nose, brought it away bloody. Kaiah wheeled through the sky, circling them, roaring again, fairly trembling with anticipation.
Her hand strayed to her belly.
I don’t think I can, brother …
WE KILLED HIM ONCE. WE CAN DO IT AGAIN.
Yukiko sat tall on his back, katana clutched in her hand.
I let anger and vengeance cloud my judgment before. We’ve killed hundreds of people and what has it gotten us? Where has it led us? We killed Yoritomo and simply made more chaos. We had a hand in all of this, Buruu. We helped set this city, this whole nation, on fire.
We have to be more than this. More than rage. More than revenge. Or else we will drown, Buruu. You. Me. All of us. Just like you said.
The beast growled, hackles rippling.
HE DESERVES IT FOR WHAT HE DID TO YOU. THIS BOY DESERVES TO DIE.
Yukiko sank down on his shoulders, a fire wind whipping hair across her eyes.
Everything dies, brother.
She stared at the boy on the deck of his ship, watching him roar and rage and rev his blades. All that was. That could have been. That would never be again. The memory of a tablet in a garden of stone, marked with her own father’s name. The memory of his loss, real and sharp in her mind. Hand slipping from her belly to the blade he’d given her, all she had left of him save fading memories. And she stared at the boy she once loved, the arms that had once encircled her waist as he pressed his lips to hers—one of flesh, and one of cold, dead iron. She reached across the gulf between them, into the burning fire of his thoughts, acutely aware of how little effort it would take to simply … squeeze. And there, amidst that impossible tangle, curled at the edges by rage and despair, she caught an impression. A single revelation. A fragment of knowledge, consuming, inundating, immolating all he was.
Aisha gone.
Dead.
So much blood.
And looking down on the ruins of the city below, the smoke and the bodies, the scarlet in the streets deep enough to sink in, the thought of adding one more drop filled her to sickening.
What we came here to do has been done for us.
WHAT?
The wedding has been stopped, Buruu. The dynasty is in ruins. The Guild’s plan is undone.
She ran one hand through his fur.
Enough for today.
She sheathed the katana at her back. Put away her anger and tossed her head. The boy in his ash-pale iron roared and spat and screamed, and her hands drifted once more to her stomach, to the dread and horror and enormity she felt swelling there. Fire burning in her mind. The city burning below. The Shōgun’s peace in tatters, the civil war inevitable now. Tiger against Dragon. Dragon against Fox. Fox against Tiger. The Guild amongst it all.
“Good-bye, Hiro…”
And as they turned away from Kigen, cutting through the air back to the north, a single thought burned like a star in her mind. A promise on a not-too-distant horizon, so close she could taste it in the very air. A certainty, light as iron, warm as ice, that Buruu’s river would swallow them all now, no matter what they did.
The Lotus War has begun.
55
ARMY OF THE SUN
The wolves had almost run them to ground.
Michi hovered by the railing on the captain’s deck, watching the pursuing floodlights grow larger. The running lights of the corvettes were smaller, brighter, the drone of their engines of a higher pitch. She fancied she could make out something of their shape in the glow of their floods and the hint of a distant dawn; sleek and sharp, like knives flung through the air, speeding right toward them.
The Kurea’s captain stood by the wheel, occasionally looking back over his shoulder and spitting, knuckles white on the controls. The ship’s engines were at full burn, temperature gauges hovering in the red, her aft shuddering with the strain. Smoke poured from her exhaust, her four propellers making the sound of thunder. But no matter how hard her captain willed it, no matter how loud her engines bellowed, she simply wasn’t fast enough to outrun the hounds on her tail.
“What happens when the corvettes catch us?” Kaori asked.
“They’ll hit our engines to wound us, slow us down enough for the ironclads to catch up. Then they’ll board. They’ll want to take us alive.”
“That can’t happen,” Kaori said.
“I know,” he nodded. “I know.”
“What is your name, Captain-san?” Michi said.