Gods knew how many more dwelled in the chapterhouses, but Yukiko had seen three different kinds of Guildsmen in her life: three variations of the same metallic, insectoid theme. The first were the garden-variety Lotusmen who stalked Kigen streets and swarmed about its sky-docks like flies on dung. The second were the terrible Purifiers, reciting thousand-year-old scripture and lighting the pyres under children’s feet at the Burning Stones. And lastly, there were the Artificers. If the Lotusmen were the Guild’s troops, and the Purifiers their priests, the Artificers were its mechanics; a sect of engineers and technicians responsible for the creation of every machine and marvel the Guild had yet gifted to Shima’s populace.
The Thunder Child’s Guildsman was one of these Artificers. Its brass suit was the product of a back-alley coupling between a regular atmos-suit and a chi-powered toolbox. Arcane apparatus were bolted across every surface: drills, torque wrenches, cutting torches and circular saws, its backpack replete with a small loading crane and acetylene tanks. Unlike the faceted eyes of the Purifiers or regular Lotusmen, the Artificers instead had a single rectangular slab of glowing red light in the middle of their empty faces. A series of switches and dials were arrayed on its chest, alongside the click-clack of the ever-turning mechabacus. As Yukiko watched, the Guildsman began pushing beads back and forth along the device’s rungs, a series of complex, intricate movements, like a musician’s fingers dancing across taut strings. Although most people assumed mechabacii were some form of counting machine, the truth was nobody but the Guildsmen knew what the hells they were actually for.
She glanced down at the knife waiting in the wood in front of her. Akihito nudged Kasumi, and the pair fell still, watching the Guildsman in its clanking brass suit approach across the varnished deck. It stepped up beside Yukiko and stared out over the railing, the geometry of the fields below refracted on its single, glowing eye. There was a small hiss as a discharge of oily smoke issued from its pack.
The hunters cast wary glances at each other.
The Guildsman turned and looked down at the vial of blacksleep in Kasumi’s hand.
“Class six toxin.” Its voice was a swarm of flies. “Purpose?”
“You know why we’re here,” Yukiko muttered.
“Permit.” It extended one gauntleted hand to punctuate the demand.
“Of course, Guildsman,” said Kasumi, doing her best to glare at the girl from behind her goggles. She reached into a pack and produced several scrolls, each set with the Shōgun’s seal. The Artificer took them with care, scanning the kanji before returning the paperwork with a nod. The bellows on its pack pumped up and down to the sawing of hollow, mechanical breath.
“Thank you, citizen,” it buzzed.
“You work on this ship?” Yukiko tilted her head at the Guildsman.
It turned to regard the girl with its strange, glittering eye. Yukiko wondered what it looked like beneath the metal shell, whether it missed the touch of the sun on its skin. If it heard the screams of burning children when it closed its eyes at night. The stare was blank and featureless, like looking into a mirror and finding no one staring back at you.
“Hai,” it said.
Yukiko stared back hard, ignoring Akihito’s not-so- subtle gestures for silence. “Why? No lotus is being hauled on this trip.”
“Every sky-ship leaving port is required to have an Artificer on board.”
“To spy on the crew, right? Make sure they aren’t taking their own cut of the shipments?”
“To maintain the engines. Citizen.”
Yukiko licked her lips and remained mute as the deck rocked beneath them. The Guildsman peered at her for a heavy, silent moment, then with seemingly nothing left to do, it turned to leave.
“The lotus must bloom,” it rasped, clanking back toward the cabin.
Akihito waited until it was out of sight before turning on Yukiko. “What the hells were you speaking to it for?” he hissed. “Why are you always pushing those bastards?”
Kasumi’s voice was gentle. “Yukiko, you should be more careful . . .”
“You’re not my mother,” Yukiko glared at the older woman. “Don’t you dare try to lecture me.”
She scowled down at the deck, stabbing her tantō into the wood again. Kasumi watched her for a moment, worry written in the set of her shoulders, the tilt of her head. Then with a meaningful glance at Akihito, she returned to her work. The big man sighed, spat on his whetstone again and resumed grinding it across the edge of one razor-sharp blade.
Almost everyone Yukiko knew distrusted and feared the Guild, but their Artificers built the technical marvels on which the Empire now depended to expand. She knew there must have been a time before all this, before the fivesided chapterhouses grew in the heart of Shima’s cities, choking the streets with exhaust fumes and the skies with toxins. But if there was such a day, it lay too far back in history now for anyone she knew to remember it. If asked where the Guild had come from, or how they had come to control the fuel that drove the Shōgunate, the average citizen would most likely cast a wary glance over his shoulder and quickly turn his talk to other things.