The heat was blistering. Yukiko and Akihito made their way through the squeezeways, over the refuse-choked gutters, past the grasping hands of a dozen blacklung beggars and down into Docktown; a cramped and weeping growth of low-rent tenements and rusting warehouses slumped in the shadow of the sky-ships. A broad wooden boardwalk stretched out over the black waters of the bay, hundreds of people shoving and weaving their way across the bleached timbers. The docking spires were thin metal towers, corroded by black rain. Hissing pipes and cables pumped hydrogen and the volatile lotus fuel, simply called “chi,” up to the waiting sky-ships. The towers swayed in the wind, creaking ominously whenever a ship docked or put out to the red again. Lotusmen swarmed in the air about them like brass corpseflies, the pipes coiled on their backs spitting out bright plumes of blue-white flame.
Steam whistles shrieked in the distance; breakfast break for the workers slaving in Kigen’s sprawling nest of chi refineries. It was a well-known truth that most of the wretches sweating inside those walls were expected to die there. If the toxic fumes or heavy machinery didn’t end them, working twenty-hour shifts for barely more than a beggar’s salary probably would. The laborers were known as “karōshimen”— literally, men who kill themselves through overwork. It was ironic, given that many of them were little more than children. Flitting among grinding cogs and crunching gears that could snag and chew a stray lock of hair or an unwary hand without skipping a beat, soft flesh withering in the shadow of hard metal and blue-black smoke. Children turned old and feeble before they ever had a chance to be young.
“Vwuch vwyy?” Akihito asked.
Yukiko sipped her broth and found she’d completely lost her appetite. “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” she murmured.
The giant stuffed the last of his cracker bowl into his mouth. Yukiko pointed
in the direction of the eastern docks, furthest away from the cloud of smog and ash and reeking exhaust fumes.
“Is that . . . crab I smell?” The voice was weak, muffled against Akihito’s ribs.
“He lives!” The big man grinned, slinging his friend down off his shoulders and planting him in the street. Masaru squinted, eye swelling shut, long peppergray hair a bedraggled mess. His face was smeared with blood.
“Izanagi’s balls, my head.” He winced, rubbing the back of his skull. “What hit me?”
Akihito shrugged.
“Saké.”
“We didn’t drink that much . . .”
“Here, eat.” Yukiko offered her father the remainder of her breakfast. Grabbing the bowl, Masaru gulped it down as the crowd seethed around them. He swayed on his feet, looking for a moment as if the crab might make a break for freedom, then patted his stomach and belched.
“What the hells are we doing down here?” Masaru glared around the docks, one hand aloft to shield his eyes from the hothouse light while he fished out his goggles.
“We’ve been summoned,” Yukiko said.
“Summoned to what? Breakfast?”
Akihito snickered.
“A hunt.” Yukiko frowned at the big man.
“A hunt?” Masaru scoffed, checking to see if his ribs were cracked. “For the Shōgun’s slippers?”
“I thought you’d be at least a little happy about it.” Yukiko looked back and forth between the pair. “It’ll give you both something to do besides smoking your money away in card houses all day.”
Akihito frowned. “I don’t smoke . . .”
“There’s nothing left out there that’s worth hunting.” Masaru rubbed at the saké bottle-imprint on the back of his head. “The Shōgun should just bloody dismiss us and be done with it.”
“He’s sending us after an arashitora,” Akihito muttered.
Masaru scowled up at the big man.
“I thought you just said you didn’t smoke. Did you start when I wasn’t looking? Bloody fool, it’s a filthy habit, I’ll not—”
“The scroll arrived last night, father,” Yukiko said. “Set with the seal of the Shōgun himself. A thunder tiger has been spotted by cloudwalkers past the Iishi Mountains.”
“Damned cloudwalkers,” Masaru shook his head. “Drunk on chi exhaust twenty-four hours a day. They’d say they saw the cursed fruit of Lady Izanami’s black loins, the thousand and one oni dancing naked in the lotus fields, if they thought it’d get them a free meal or into some harlot’s bed . . .”
Masaru caught himself and pressed his lips shut, cheeks reddening.
“We’re commanded to bring it back alive.” Yukiko steered the subject away from sex as fast as she could. She was still occasionally woken by nightmares about the day her father had tried to sit her down for “the talk.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?” Masaru asked. “They’re extinct!”
“That would be your bloody problem, wouldn’t it? Or was someone else appointed Black Fox of Shima and Master of Hunters when I wasn’t looking?”