The rag-men reminded Michi of the children in her village: flesh draped like translucent cloth around their bones, all elbows and knuckles and hollow cheeks amidst the fat rice fields. Little boys and girls, starving to death, surrounded by so much food. Sometimes she still had nightmares about them; silent waifs standing in the burning village, watching her uncle’s execution.
When all this was over, when the Guild and the Shōgun were nothing but a bad memory, she would write a book. A true history for Shima’s children to read and feel and remember, that they would know the real price their country had paid for fuel and power. That they would know the names of those who stood in defiance of tyranny, who fought and died so that they might one day be free.
“The Lotus War.”
She couldn’t imagine a name more fitting.
They arrived at Masaru’s cell. Kasumi knelt at the bars and stretched her
hands toward him, voice wet with tears. The rice and dried fruit Michi had smuggled in had done him good; he looked stronger and sharper, the flesh on his bones wasn’t so gray. But he was still weak, drunk on stinking heat and lack of sunlight, clothed in grime and tattered rags. She unlocked the cell, turned to Akihito.
“Can you carry him?” The big man didn’t answer, just shouldered past and picked up Masaru in a bear hug, a grin slapped onto his face to hide the anguish at his friend’s condition. Kasumi held tight to Masaru’s hand, kissed him on the lips. Michi wrinkled her nose at the thought of what he must taste like.
“We need to go,” she hissed, eyeing the corridor.
“Indeed you do.”
A match flared in the gloom, a bright hiss of sulfur illuminating a wrinkled
face, hard, sunken eyes. Minister Hideo puffed at his pipe, flame pulsing between his fingers, light rippling across the banded armor of the bushimen surrounding him. Naked kodachi glittered in their hands; short, single-bladed swords ideal for close-quarter fighting. Though there were no Iron Samurai among the soldiers, the conspirators were still outnumbered by at least a dozen.
The sound of footsteps from the stairs made Michi’s heart sink. More bushimen poured down from the entrance, cutting off their escape.
So many.
Too many.
“We are betrayed,” she whispered.
“Kin, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.” The Guildsman held up one gauntlet, stabbed at the release clasp
about his throat. His helmet peeled away in its tiny ballet and he tore it from
his head, unplugging it from his skin before dashing it against the ground.
Face gleaming with sweat, cheeks blotched with anger. “I feel enough of a fool
already. Don’t make it any worse.”
“Kin, I wanted to tell you . . .”
“But you were afraid if you did, I wouldn’t help you, right?”
“I suppose, but—”
“So you lied instead. Well, congratulations. You got your way. I hope you
get everything you deserve.”
“I didn’t lie to you, Kin. I just didn’t tell you the whole—”
BEWARE.
Yukiko frowned, the sounds of metal footfalls ringing at the edge of hearing.
What is it?
INSECTS. MANY. THEY ARE COMING.
The sound grew louder, Kin breaking his stare and glancing about as the
din of ō-yoroi and chainkatana rose. Chattering steel and hissing chi. “Oh no,” Yukiko breathed.
Two dozen Iron Samurai charged into the arena from east and west: heavy,
steel-shod footsteps, golden jin-haori, neo-daishō filling the air with the growl of serrated metal teeth. Yoritomo stalked at their rear, yards of red silk billowing behind him, one hand resting on the hilt of his katana. His face was torn, four long gouges running down his cheek to his throat. Spattered in blood, hands and face, eyes glazed white in a pale mask splashed with red. Another
Iron Samurai walked by his side.
“Oh, Kin, no.”
She turned to him, disbelief in her eyes.
“You told them?”
34 Stormdancer
Rats screeched in the darkness, their cries echoing among the stink. “Lay down your weapons,” Hideo exhaled, the air swimming with cloying
lotus smoke. “Or die here and now.”
“Bastard whoreson,” the big one spat. “I’ll kill you and all your little girlfriends.”
The giant set the Black Fox down on the cell floor, stepped into the corridor.
Hideo noted with faint satisfaction that the fool had chosen his weapon poorly;
the corridor was too narrow to swing the kusarigama’s chain. Neither the sickle
nor the woman’s bo-staff would be a match for a cadre of bushimen with kodachi. The girl with the tsurugi might prove problematic, however, and of all these
traitors, Hideo wanted her alive to question. He had been trying to uncover the
Kagé cell within Kigen for years, and suspected there might be more rats in
the cellar. A few days in the torture cells, and her singing would put a nightingale to shame.
“There is no need for violence,” the old man smiled. “Yield now and we will
show you mercy.”
“Like you showed at Daiyakawa?” the girl spat.
“Or to Captain Yamagata?” sneered the woman.
Hideo sighed, leaned on his walking stick. He was getting too old for this
nonsense. All things being equal, he’d rather be taking a nice, cool bath. He