The net-throwers fired, spools of metal singing in the air, the arashitora moving like poetry between the wailing cables. Buruu and Yukiko swept beneath the keel of the right corvette, coming up on her port side and tearing her engine loose in a bright plume of rolling flame. The sky-ship spun on its axis, listing hard to one side, her crew leaping out into the dark, rocket packs arcing in the brightening night as their vessel tumbled earthward. The second arashitora sailed over the inflatable of the sister corvette, reaching down with ebony claws and shredding the canvas; peeling it away from the framework spine like bloated corpse-skin. Hydrogen shrieked as it escaped into the dark, the corvette plummeting from the sky like a broken bird, spiraling down toward its end, Lotusmen fleeing its ruins amidst plumes of blue-white flame.
The Kagé roared in triumph, weapons raised to the sky as the white shapes wheeled about and returned to the Kurea’s flank. Yukiko sat up straight, held her hand high in the air, fingers curled into a fist. Dozens of fists were raised in answer, Akihito leaning over the railing and bellowing Yukiko’s name, hand outstretched. Buruu roaring like colliding thunderheads, his cry echoed by the second thunder tiger on their starboard side as the light of Lady Sun finally cleared the eastern horizon and set the skies aflame.
Michi sheathed the chainkatana at her waist, exhaustion and relief and bitter, black sorrow, Aisha’s passing weighing heavy on her heart. But at the sound of the Kagé cheers, the joy shining on Akihito’s face, the sight of fists rising into the air as the Guild ships fell back, she found a faint smile blooming on her lips. Breathing just a little easier. Happy for a moment just to be alive, in the space where death had loomed just moments before. When all had seemed lost. When all hope was gone.
The second thunder tiger bellowed loud enough to set the Kurea’s rivets chattering, descending in a broad spiral around the sky-ship, the Kagé’s eyes alight with wonderment. And as Yukiko and Buruu swept around the stern amidst their triumphant cries, fingers balled tight and thrust in the sky, as their eyes met across that howling trail of blue-black smoke and Yukiko called her name, Michi found herself grinning, raising her fist into the air.
And together, the arashitora and the Kurea turned north, toward the shadow of the Iishi on the horizon, bathed in the light of a dawn long overdue.
Not a victory. Not even close.
But perhaps …
Michi nodded.
Perhaps soon.
56
WOMB
The cage stank of dried blood. Of failure and fear. The soup-thick reek of lotus smoke and stale human waste made Kin’s eyes water, the boiling thrum of the chapterhouse above reverberating into tired bones. The manacles were cutting off his circulation, and he wriggled the numbness from his fingers. Sweat burning his eyes, fumes burning his lungs, he hung his head and waited in the aching dark.
His cage was one of hundreds, row upon row of iron bars, running the ribs of a vast, gloom-soaked room. The wall at his back was dirty yellow, armpit-moist with condensation, slick and warm to the touch. Not so long ago, the chapterhouse cells would have been filled with flesh—the old and the infirm, women and children with fair skin and wide, round eyes and blond and red and auburn hair, all waiting their turn to shuffle meekly into the inochi vats and meet their boiling end. But now the cages were empty, one after another, bare, sweating stone picked out by pinpricks of flickering halogen.
He closed his eyes, sought his center, the emptiness of self he’d found in the workshop, the long silence within the press of his metal shell. He could feel sweat creeping into the plugs studding his flesh, the pull of cable beneath. He tried to block out the half-remembered echo of the mechabacus in his head, the stink of the smoke and the shit, to remember why he’d come here. Why he’d chosen this.
He thought of the girl, felt the lead-lined wings of butterflies in his stomach, heart thumping in his chest. He pictured her standing on a rope footbridge in the Iishi village, a silhouette etched against ancient trees as the moon took his throne, wind running its fingers through her hair.
To be the wind …
He remembered the kiss in the dark, shrouded in wisteria perfume. He could still feel her body against him, the soft, insistent press of her lips against his. He remembered how she’d looked, crying in the gloom, moonlight glittering in her tears. He remembered the taste of them. The heartbroken sigh.
“We don’t belong here.”
Guilt tied his stomach in knots, and choked his butterflies one by one.
Kin felt him before he heard him, more an absence than a presence; a dead-blossom scent or the empty in an echo’s wake. He opened his eyes and saw the figure lurking at the halogen’s cusp, serene as a sleepwalker. Small and slender, sun-starved skin, shaved head, loose dark cloth. Sleek black filters of a mechanical breather, bottomless eyes so scrawled with capillaries there was nothing but red around his irises. Hands clasped, long, clever fingers intertwined like a penitent before a shrine. If it were not for the soft rise and fall of his chest, the chi smoke spilling from his mask with every exhalation, Kin would have thought him a statue.
His voice was soft as lullabies, a metallic whisper behind the breather.
“Do you know who I am?”
“No,” Kin said.
“Do you know what I am?”
“Of course, Inquisitor.”
And so they began to speak.
EPILOGUE