“You…” she said. “You saved me?”
The blond boy spoke—incomprehensible and guttural. The dark-haired man stood and walked to the doorway, and the pair talked in hushed tones, glancing over occasionally while Yukiko’s eyes roamed the room.
Some kind of hospice, lined with metal cots, perhaps a dozen in all. The sharp smell of liquor and burned hair, jars of chemicals stacked beneath a cast-iron sink. Gray walls, glistening with damp, wind howling through ventilation ducts lining the ceiling. Grubby bulbs in rusted, wall-mounted housings, flickering in time with the toneless howl of the wind outside. Beneath it, she could hear the roll and crack of surf, thunder rumbling across sharp rock.
The ocean’s song.
She reached out with the Kenning, tentative, the headache cinching at the base of her skull. She could feel the gaijin in the room, just like she’d felt the people of the Kagé village; indistinct smudges of alien warmth. Pushing them aside, she groped around the nearby darkness, felt the impression of something warm; an animal with a familiar shape, far too small to be a thunder tiger.
Gritting her teeth, she stretched into the gloom beyond, trying to wrest the Kenning under some kind of control. It felt like opening herself up to a hurricane, stepping naked into wind and fire, a rolling sea beneath her. She could sense a cluster of warmth; dozens of gaijin crammed together, above, below, around. Pushing out further. Wincing at the pain. Feeling something warm in the distance, the sound of a tempest, a flash of heat.
Buruu?
And then she sensed them. Far below, like nothing she’d touched before. Cold and slippery and bejeweled, staring back at her with eyes of polished yellow glass.
Hissing.
She withdrew, slammed the door shut on her power, folded down on herself and drew a long, shuddering breath. Even with her newfound strength, she hadn’t been able to sense Buruu. Was he unconscious? Dead? What had happened to him?
Blinking, ignoring the pounding ache in her head, she tried to remember. The sensation of falling came first; the terrifying split second of inertia as momentum failed and gravity took hold. Choppy red water beneath her, rising fast. Impact knocking the breath from her lungs. Sodden clothes dragging her down, shapes in the sky above as lightning flashed.
Arashitora. Two males.
And they were fighting.
“Shima?”
The familiar word pulled her back into the room, into the half-blind stare of the dark-haired man. The gaijin was looking at her intently, arms folded, a far throw from friendly. The blond boy stared at the floor, sucking on the smoking stick, exhaling clouds of honey-scented gray. The headache was a raw wound drilled behind her ears, chiseled atop her spine.
“You Shima?” Astonishingly, the scarred man was speaking in her own tongue—he had a broken, bowlegged accent, but his words were Shiman nonetheless. Stepping closer, he pointed to her, then waved in a direction she presumed was south. The gaijin walked with a severe limp, and when his right foot hit the stone, she heard the chink of metal.
“Hai,” she nodded. “Shima.”
The man scowled and turned on the blond boy, raising his hand as if to strike him, spitting angry gibberish. The boy flinched away, smoke stick crushed between gritted teeth.
“Please.” She licked her lips, voice cracking. “Where am I?”
“Eh?” The scarred man frowned, turned toward her.
“Can you understand me?”
“Little.” He pinched the air between forefinger and thumb. “Little.”
“Where am I?” She annunciated the words clearly. “Where?”
He snapped at her—an angry spiel she didn’t understand.
“I don’t—”
Roaring, face growing red, storming over to the cot. He raised his hand and she shied away, cringing against the wall. The slap caught her full on the cheek, knocked her near-senseless, kindling the pain lurking behind her eyes. Sinking down onto the mattress, she screwed one eye shut in anticipation of another blow.
“Piotr.” The blond boy spoke a mouthful of tumbling words, concern plain in his voice.
Yukiko looked up at the dark-haired gaijin, blood in her mouth, salt biting at the split in her lip. She thrashed briefly against her restraints.
“You touch me again and I’ll kill you…” she spat.
The man lowered his hand, calloused, broad as a war fan. He stared at his fingers and mumbled, limped back to the blond, spitting out another tangle of nonsense. The boy stalked from the room, wet footprints in his wake. The older man lurked by the doorway, running one finger down the scar beneath his eye, thunderclouds gathered over his head.
With shaking hands, he fished a wooden pipe carved like a fish from his pocket, stuffing it with dry leaves from a leather pouch. Yukiko could see a red jacket with brass buttons beneath his white coat, more insignia pinned to the collar.
Crossed swords.
A soldier?