“Try losing an eye. See how much your hearing improves.”
They flitted on through the haze, stopping several times at Hana’s signal, slipping into shadows or squeezeways to avoid bushimen patrols or sky-ships rumbling overhead. The soldiers cut across the streets in random patterns, but Hana never failed to hear them, to hiss a quiet warning and drag him from the light. She moved like a fish through water, falling still as stone when the bushi’ drew close, melting away like smoke. It was uncanny. Unnerving.
As they neared the drop box, she pushed him into an alcove beside a baker’s shopfront, cracked awnings and cloudy beach glass. Pressing in beside him, she stared off into space. Again, her eyelid fluttered as if in a breeze, iris rolling up in her head. Daken leaped over the space between the rooftops above, his grace belying his bulk.
Akihito thought of Masaru then, stalking the last of Shima’s monsters together in long-gone days, Sensei Rikkimaru and Kasumi by their sides. The big man could see his friend clearly, as if the great hunts were only yesterday: yew bow held in stone-steady hands, string taut, arrow nocked, the Black Fox’s eyes rolling up in his head as he fired.
Never missing.
And looking now at this slip of a girl beside him, head tilted on a pale, slender neck, eye rolled back in her socket, he knew. Knew why that tomcat clung to her and her brother like iron to a lodestone. Why rats never squeaked at their approach. Why she reminded him so much of Yukiko.
He knew.
“We’ll have to wait.” Hana pulled her kerchief down to spit. “More bushi’ ahead.”
He nodded. “As you say, little fox.”
“‘Little fox’?” Her smile was crooked. “I’m not Kitsune.”
“Well, you remind me of a few I’ve known. You move like them. And gods know you’re pale enough to be Fox clan. Even we Phoenix have a little color about us.” He poked her on the chin, and she smiled again. “But you’re white as Iishi snow.”
“We used to live in Kitsune lands,” she shrugged. “There’s probably some Fox in our blood, way back down the line.”
“You father was lowborn too?”
“Soldier,” she nodded. “Fought the gaijin in Morcheba.”
Looking out to the street, she scowled and muttered.
“Fought them back here too…”
Akihito frowned, unsure what she meant. “So when did you come to Kigen?”
“When I was ten. We flew on a Kitsune merchant ship. So high we could almost see the whole island.” Her face lit up as if the sun had stolen out from behind the clouds. “The people below looked like children’s toys. I’ll never forget it. What I wouldn’t give to live up there…”
“What happened to your parents?” he asked. “Where are they?”
“Gone.”
“Don’t you have family somewhere?”
“Yoshi and Jurou are my family. The only ones I need. Anyways, why do you care?”
“Well, because this is no way for you children to be living, that’s why.”
She turned on him, a scowl darkening her face, eye narrowed near to shutting.
“Children?” Her expression was disbelieving. “Is that what you think of me?”
“Well—”
“Do you know what it takes to live in Shima’s gutters, Akihito-san?” Her voice hardened, became a thing of cold stone. “Have you ever had to break someone’s skull for a scrap of food or a dry corner to sleep in? Ever watched your friends selling their bodies for copper bits? Has your life ever been so awful that a job slinging shit in the royal palace sounds like paradise?” She glanced at the beggars, the bloodstains and rot around them. “You honestly think children live here anymore?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant. Oh, and before you spit on the way I live? In case you didn’t notice, you’re living right there with me, Akihito.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t know me.” Her lips were tight across her teeth. “You don’t know anything about me. The things I’ve seen. The things I’ve done. I’m risking my life every day in that palace, and the two people I love most in this world don’t even know I’m doing it. Most people in this city wouldn’t piss on me if I were on fire, and I do it anyway. Because it’s right. Because no one else will. Fuck you, calling me a godsdamned child…”
He put his hand on her shoulder, squeezing tight as she tried to flinch away. He could feel the too-thin flesh beneath new cloth, the bird-brittle bones beneath that.
“I’m sorry, Hana.”