“You don’t get to judge me, Kin.”
“Godsdammit, I’m not judging you. I care about you! And I see you turning into this … thing, this Stormdancer, and piece by piece I see the Yukiko I know falling away.” He sighed, dragging a hand across his scalp. “I mean … you killed those Guildsmen, Yukiko. Three ironclads full. Over a hundred people. And you killed them.”
“I let one of them live.” Her stare was cold. Defiant. “But maybe I should have let them firebomb the forest? Maybe I should have let them kill you?”
“Since when were you a mass murderer?”
“Don’t you dare.” A low growl, eyes wide. “You stood by while thousands died—”
The words were a slap to his face, rocking him back on his heels. The memory of pale-skinned women and children, row upon row of gaijin shuffling meekly to meet their boiling end. Rendered down into fertilizer, reborn in some far-flung field as beautiful, blood-red flowers. He knew it was true. Everything she said. But to hear her say it …
He blinked at her. Speechless. Senseless.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she sighed. “I’m sorry.”
Yukiko breathed deep, clawed away her hair. He could see it written on her face. Boiling inside her. Curling her fingers into fists, her lips to a grimace. When she spoke again, her voice was soft with it, trembling at the outskirts.
“I know it wasn’t your fault, Kin. The gaijin. Inochi. All of it. I know there was nothing you could do to stop it. Kaori and the others say otherwise. They say there’s no steel in you, but I know helping me in Kigen took more courage than most could ever dream.
“But this is war, Kin. The Yukiko you knew? That frightened little girl in the Shōgun’s palace? She’s gone.” Fire in her eyes. “She’s dead.”
“No steel in me…” he whispered, lips twisting in a bitter smile.
“It’s bullshit, Kin.” She took his hand, entwined her fingers with his own. “Don’t you believe it. Any of it. But know you have enemies here. People who see you as Guild first and everything else second. Stay close to Daichi while I’m gone. And stay as far from Ayane as you can. Don’t give them a reason to doubt you.”
“Why would I bother?” he spat. “They’re doing perfectly well without one…”
“Kin—”
“I hope you find the answers you seek.” He pulled his hand away, let it drop to his side. “I know Buruu will keep you safe.”
Hurt in her eyes as she chewed her lip, searched the dark for the right words to say.
“Kiss me good-bye?”
Hovering uncertain. Wanting it more than he could say. Pride and anger shushing want, leaving it alone and friendless. All he’d given, all he’d sacrificed, and this was the life he’d purchased. Watching her fly away. Leaving him, just like she’d left him in Kigen. Alone.
Again.
He put his hands to her cheeks, feeling the satin warmth of her skin, the sensation of it beneath his tingling fingertips almost crushing his resolve to powder. But in the end, tilting her head up to his, her lips parting ever so softly, he leaned down and kissed her gently on the brow.
“Good-bye, Stormdancer,” he said.
And then he turned and walked away.
Part of him screamed he was an idiot. That he would regret it. But anger and pride urged him on, the burning fuel of the indignant fool, and he stalked off into the dark with the waterfall of his blood thrashing in his ears. She called his name again, just once. But he didn’t stop. Didn’t turn his head. And somewhere deep in the back of his mind, a tiny thought found its voice for the first time; a whisper almost too faint to hear.
It kept him awake most of the night, belly-up on his mattress of straw, staring at the ceiling with sandbag eyes. Breathing. Listening. The limbo of insomnia, gray and bottomless as the hours dragged on forever, leaving him in the muddy dawn with a heart exhausted and seven words lodged in his mind like a handful of splinters.
The same question.
Over and over again.
What the hells are you doing here?
10
SALT AND COPPER
Yoshi’s lashes fluttered against his cheeks as he stole along fly-blown gutters on four feather-light feet. Towers of fetid waste looming all around him, nostrils filled with rot and fresh death, blood leaking from a broken skull onto cracked cobbles. He skulked past a snarling brood—a sleek and fearsome bunch, fourteen strong—scratching and fighting as they tore strips from the new bones. Squealing and spitting at him as he scampered by. A warning. A challenge. First spoils to the finders. Leavings to the rest. Our meat. Our alley. Our dirt.