“Don’t swear,” Masaru scowled.
Yukiko rolled her eyes behind her goggles. She wiped the lotus ash from the polarized lenses with her kerchief, then tied the cloth around her face to filter out the stench. With a flick of her long dark hair, she turned and walked toward the eastern docks, hands stuffed into the black obi about her waist.
Her father watched her, still rubbing the back of his head, a pained expression on his face.
“May you live a hundred years and never have daughters, my friend,” he warned Akihito.
The giant sighed and clapped him on the back, and the pair followed her into the mob.
Kasumi loaded the last pack onto the elevator, then straightened her back and sighed. She wiped her brow and re-tied her ponytail, catching up the dark strands of hair clinging to her face. At a signal from the dockman, the elevator ascended the docking spire, wheels and pulleys shrieking in protest. High above her, the Thunder Child clanked against its couplings, cloudwalkers calling from her rigging like lost birds.
Kigen Bay stretched out to the south; an undulating carpet of bobbing filth and flaming refuse. Lotusmen had lit a fire on the black waters three days ago to burn off some of the accumulated chi-sludge, and parts of it were still ablaze, trailing dark columns of smoke up into the curtain of exhaust overhead. A gull with threadbare feathers cried a mournful song from atop the charred remains of a capsized fishing boat. It caught sight of movement in the muck, and readied itself for the plunge.
Pulling on a conical straw hat, Kasumi cast her eyes over the sky-ship above. She allowed herself a grudging smile; at least they were being sent on their fool’s errand in style. The ship was gleaming black, highlighted with blood-red, the long serpentine coils of a green dragon painted down the flanks of her inflatable. Her skin and fixtures were still unscarred by corrosion or toxin bleaching, telling Kasumi that the Child couldn’t have been commissioned more than a season or two ago. Nothing stayed beautiful under Shima’s black rain for long.
Kasumi was dressed in loose gray cloth. The short sleeves of her uwagi revealed beautiful tattoos; the imperial sun on her left shoulder and upper arm, a ferocious tiger stalking down her right, marking her as a member of the Tora clan. The geisha at Shōgun Yoritomo’s court whispered that she was well past the age when she should have found a husband, but she still possessed a sharp, feral kind of beauty. Deeply lidded eyes, skin turned nut brown by a life spent beneath Shima’s sweltering red sun. Black hair ran in rivers down her spine, pierced by jade combs carved to resemble prowling tigers. There was a hardness to her, calluses and lean muscles, a glint of ferocity in her movements: a big cat, pacing a cage as wide as the world.
Several of the Child’s crew nodded as they filed past her to climb the spire. They were cleaner than the average cloudwalker, meaning that you could probably toss one into the black “water” of Kigen Bay and have him emerge dirtier than when he went in. But their skin was still coated in a greasy film of dragon smoke, their eyes the perpetual red of a lotus-fiend’s.
The Child’s captain emerged from the small office at the spire’s base, slapping the back of the fat customs man inside.
“The lotus must bloom,” he said, nodding farewell.
“The lotus must bloom,” the fat man replied.
The captain sauntered over to Kasumi, muttering under his breath. He stuffed some paperwork into his obi as he scowled up at the Child. He was around ten years younger than her, twenty-four or twenty-five if she was forced to guess, with a long plaited mustache descending from a handsome, if slightly overfed face. His gaudy, short-sleeved tunic proudly displayed his elaborate dragon tattoo and the single lotus bloom of a Guild-approved contractor. Custom Shigisen goggles and a fantastically expensive breather were slung around his neck.
“Son of a ronin’s whore,” he said. “I should’ve been born a Lotusman. These bribes get worse every trip.”
“Bribes?” Kasumi frowned, tilted her head in question.
The captain gestured to the paperwork in his belt.
“We have to fly over three clan territories to get to the Iishi Mountains. Tiger, Dragon, then Fox. That’s three different permits, and three different officials who need their palms greased to make sure my paperwork doesn’t get ‘misplaced.’ Plus we’ll need to refuel in Yama city before we fly back, and the Kitsune just bumped their docking fees another three percent.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Yamagata-san,” Kasumi said. “Perhaps you should tell your customs man that you fly at the Shōgun’s command.”