Yukiko snorted over Kasumi’s laughter. Reaching into a pouch at her belt, the older woman tossed the giant a rehydrated rice cake, and the pair sat down in the shade to wait.
A dozen beggars were huddled across the way from the Thunder Child’s berth, wrapped in dirty rags, fingers outstretched and trembling. One was a young girl around Yukiko’s age. She was a pretty thing: deep, moist eyes and creamy skin. Her mother sat beside her, rocking back and forth, the dark, telltale marks of blacklung smudged around her lips.
Kasumi touched the kerchief tied around her own face, wondered for the thousandth time if it would be enough to protect her from that dreaded stain. Blacklung had reached epidemic proportions in the last de cade, and the final stages of the disease were terrible enough to make its victims envy the dead. She’d feel safer with more than prayers and a grubby rag over her mouth to protect her.
Perhaps if this fool’s errand bore fruit, the Shōgun would reward them with enough kouka to afford their own mechanized breathers . . .
Kasumi scowled, shook her head at the thought.
And perhaps the Shōgun will sprout wings and have no need of a thunder tiger at all.
She watched as Yukiko wandered across the street, knelt down beside the beggars in the dust. They spoke, Yukiko and the girl, a few minutes together under the red sun. Kasumi couldn’t hear what they said. She saw Yukiko glance back at her slumbering father, then up to the sky-ship that would be their home for the next few weeks. The beggar girl followed her gaze. The mother began coughing, shoulders hunched, face twisted in pain, knuckles pressed hard over her mouth. When she drew her hand away, it was smeared with dark fluid.
The girl wrapped her fingers in her mother’s, greasy black smudged between their skin. Yukiko looked up from those stained hands into the girl’s eyes. Reaching into her obi, she tugged out her coin purse and handed it over. Then she stood and walked away.
Kasumi smiled, pretended not to notice.
The sun climbed higher in the sky. The stone around them became the walls of a kiln, sweat trickling across their dusty skin. The crowd milled about amidst the fumes and flies and oppressive heat, a seething ocean of flesh and bone and metal beneath a burning sky.
“An arashitora, Kas,’ Akihito muttered. “Gods help us.”
Kasumi sighed and turned her eyes to the horizon.
High above them, the lone gull called into the choking wind and received no answer.
6 A Boy with Sea-Green Eyes
It was mid-afternoon when the sound of singing roused Yukiko from her stupor. Akihito stood and tilted his straw hat away from his eyes, frowning into the distance.
“Here he comes,” the big man muttered. Yukiko and Kasumi rose to stand beside him. Masaru still snored on his bed of packing crates. Through the shimmering heat, they could see a procession winding down the broad cobbled boulevard from the imperial palace.
Long red banners adorned with the imperial sun were caught high in the dirty breeze, whipping about like headless serpents. The figures of nine huge Iron Samurai led the cohort, another nine bringing up the rear. The men stood almost seven feet tall, golden tabards marking them as members of the Shōgun’s personal guard; the Kazumitsu Elite. They were encased in great suits of mechanized armor known as “ō-yoroi.” The piston-driven iron was lacquered with black enamel, awash with the color of old blood beneath the scorching red sun. Chainsaw katana and wakizashi were sheathed at their waists. To inspire terror in their enemies, the mempō faceguards of the samurai’s helms were crafted into the likenesses of snarling oni: the demon spawn of the black Yomi underworld. The spaulders protecting their shoulders were broad and flat, like the great eaves of the imperial palace. The gleaming cloth of their jin-haori tabards was embroidered with the kami totem of the Tora clan: a proud, snarling tiger. Tall golden banners marked with the same symbol fluttered above the combustion engine mounted on each samurai’s back, their exhaust pipes spewing chi smoke into the already greasy breeze. They marched with one thick gauntlet wrapped tight around the scabbard of their katana, right hand grasping the hilt, as if ready to draw the weapons at a moment’s notice. The armored suits made a din like iron bolts being dropped into a meat grinder.