*
She’d rolled out of bed before the sunset and dragged on her servant’s clothes, the taste of stale exhaust buttered on her tongue. Washing her face in their bucket of tepid water, she felt at her cheek, her eyebrow, the scar tissue smooth beneath her fingers. Her memory awash with the gleam of candlelight on broken glass. Spit and blood. She straightened the patch over her eye, smoothed her unruly bob down as best she could and prepared to inhale her night. A glance into Yoshi and Jurou’s bedroom showed both boys asleep, sprawled across grubby sheets, mercifully free of cat excrement.
Bye, Daken.
The tom was sitting at the windowsill, a black silhouette against the slowly darkening sky, watching her with piss-colored eyes.
… careful …
No One picked up the iron-thrower, lying amidst the empty bottles and scattered playing cards. She slipped the weight into a hidden pocket beneath her shoulder, patted its bulk.
I’m always careful. See you tonight.
… will see you first …
Out the door and down the stairs into dirty streets and long shadows, hundreds of people scurrying about their business before the nighttime curfew fell. The city’s stink was waiting for her—human waste, black seawater and chi fumes. Autumn’s chill was a welcome relief after the blistering summer, but the scarlet sunset was still bright as a blast furnace, and she slipped her decrepit goggles over her eye to spare it the burn.
She could feel the noise pressing on her skin, the bustle and murmur of people hurrying to end their day, the hum of motor-rickshaw, generator growls. Beneath it all, more a vibration than a sound, she could sense the subtle ring of discontent. Of anger. Broken glass crunching underfoot, the straw-dry crackle of tinder, ready to ignite. Graffiti splashed over army recruitment posters; the same message on almost every street.
ARASHI-NO-ODORIKO COMES.
She walked over the tar-black Shoujo and Shiroi rivers, into the cramped symmetry of Upside. Here the mood shifted; neo-chōnin merchants scurrying about, hunched shoulders and nervous glances, market stalls standing empty. The sun was kissing the horizon by the time she made it to the palace grounds, bowing low before the gate guards, proffering her permit with downcast gaze. The lowly Shit Girl was unworthy of evening salutations, of course, and the men simply opened the gate and stood aside. The thought of speaking to a Burakumin would no more have crossed their minds than the thought of addressing raw sewage floating in the gutter.
Courtiers gathered in multicolored knots, murmurs hidden behind breather and fluttering fan, watchful eyes narrowed to paper cuts as she made her way to the royal wing to begin her nightly duties. A trio of wretchedly thin tigers strained against their chains in the gloom-soaked courtyard, wheezing in the poisoned air. Once she entered the Daimyo’s wing, everywhere she walked, the chirp and skritch and creak of nightingale floors followed like a shadow.
If the floors were not enough to dissuade potential assassins, the Guild had released a swarm of what were apparently called “spider-drones” inside the palace a week ago. The devices were fist-sized, set with a windup key and eight segmented legs, needle-sharp. They crawled the halls, the ceilings, delicate clockwork innards tick-tick-ticking. She’d picked one up out of curiosity when they first appeared, and it had vibrated in her hand and sang tang!tang!tang! until she put it down again. A fellow servant had warned her the devices transmitted everything they saw to their Guild masters, and from that day forth, No One had been looking over her shoulder for the accursed little machines. Between the floors and the Guild’s eyes, Lord Hiro’s claim to the throne was looking more secure by the day.
Stopping outside the Daimyo’s suite, she bowed low to the Iron Samurai guarding his door. Their golden tabards declared them members of the Kazumitsu Elite—the guardians of the royal line, wreathed in the shame of failure after the Shōgun’s assassination. They stood seven feet tall in their suits of ō-yoroi armor, all pistons and clockwork and roof-broad spaulders, chainsaw katana and wakizashi crossed at their waists. In the days before Yoritomo’s death, their suits had been enameled black, but now the armor was painted bone-white; the color of death daubed onto living men.
She’d heard rumors about the night of the Inochi Riots, when news of the Guild’s atrocities against gaijin war prisoners had first broken over the wireless. Stories about a legion of pale ghosts issuing forth from the royal palace to crush the uprising into the dust. A young captain leading their charge, flames glinting in eyes as green as hellsfire.
An almost imperceptible nod told No One she was allowed inside. Bowing low, she pulled aside the double doors, gaze downturned, shoulders hunched.