“It’s like any other bird, girl,” Masaru snapped. “If we were breaking in a
falcon, we’d do the same. Anything with wings asserts dominance through superior altitude. Take that away, it breaks their spirit. We need to break this beast, and quickly. We don’t have enough blacksleep to knock it out until Kigen. It’s torn the ship to shreds.”
“You’re just going to make it angrier!”
“Aiya, girl. You don’t know what the hells you’re talking about.” “It’s not just a beast, it thinks like we do. I fel—”
She glanced around quickly and lowered her voice, taking her father by the
arm.
“I felt it.”
“You Kenned it?” Masaru hissed, eyes narrowed.
“Hai.” She lowered her gaze to the deck. “I couldn’t help it. It was so beautiful. Like nothing I’d ever seen before.” Her eyes shone as she looked into Masaru’s face. “Please, father, there must be some other way.”
Masaru stared at his daughter, his stony facade softening for a brief moment. She reminded him suddenly of her mother. He could see Naomi in the curve of her cheek, the determination in her eyes, that gods-awful stubbornness he had so adored. But just as quickly as it had come, the softness inside him was gone, replaced with a hunter’s pragmatism and the knowledge that the beast would send them all to their graves if it wasn’t calmed. His daughter among them.
“I’m sorry, Ichigo. There is no other way.”
“Please, father—”
“Enough!” he barked, and the thunder rolled in answer, making Yukiko
flinch. He turned without another word and stalked into the cage, Akihito following with an apologetic glance. Kasumi placed one restraining hand on Yukiko’s arm, but the girl shrugged her off. Hugging herself tight, she stared at her father’s back, numb and silent, rain spattering across her skin.
Knowledge that the beast could wake at any second bid Masaru to work swift and sure. Akihito knelt among the ruined nets beside the thunder tiger’s right shoulder. The arashitora’s wing structure was similar to an eagle’s: twenty-three primary feathers, each as long as Masaru’s legs and just as broad, glinting with an odd metallic sheen. Twenty-three secondaries, white as new snow. The greater and primary coverts were speckled gray, darkening to charcoal among the lesser coverts. Even slack in the blacksleep repose, Masaru could sense the terrible strength in each wing, enough to propel this impossible beast through the storm-tossed skies like a koi fish beneath the surface of a smooth millpond.
Akihito spread the primaries out in a fan. Masaru drew in one steady, measured breath, brow furrowed, exhaling softly. He gripped the nagamaki tight, knuckles white on the scarlet cord binding the haft. His fingers drummed upon the hilt.
My hands must be as stone. My hands and heart.
The blade fell. A clean slice. Razor-sharp, folded steel, hard as diamond. A faint tearing sound, barely a whisper in the wind. Feathers parted as if they were made of smoke, sheared back to half their length. The severed ends drifted to the deck, looking pathetic and fragile beneath the falling rain.
Behind him, Masaru heard his daughter begin to weep.
He nodded to Akihito, and the men moved to the other wing, repeating the procedure, swift and clinical. Despite the turbulence, the motion of the deck beneath them, the nagamaki fell true, cleaving the feathers like a hot blade through snow. Masaru pushed aside the feeling that he was cutting away a part of himself. He watched the scene as if in a dream, rolling with the motion of the ship, the long blade an extension of his own hand. A hand bloodied by the life of a hundred beasts. The hand of a hunter. A destroyer.
The only living thing he had ever created stood behind him, her tears disappearing in the rain.
When it was done, he stood back and surveyed his work with a critical eye. Clean cuts, not too close to the blood vessels, but enough that the beast wouldn’t be capable of much more than a feeble glide until its next moult. He nodded his head.
“Good work,” agreed Akihito.
They removed the needle shafts from the beast’s flanks and slapped a thick green poultice over the punctures. Crimson stained its fur, dripping onto the deck, covering their hands. The blood smelled of ozone and rusted iron.
They heard a low growl, a rumble that shook their insides. The beast began to stir, claws flexing, gouging foot-long scores into the hardened oak deck. The hunters stood and left the cage, Masaru slamming home the door’s thick iron bolts. The arashitora growled again, the shifting of tectonic plates beneath ice-white fur.
Lightning flashed, bright as the dawn, dangerously close. Small fingers of it arced through the roiling cloud around them, cracks spreading out across its black mask, poised to crumble away into terrible violence. The wind was a pack of wolves, all lolling tongues and razor-sharp frozen teeth.
Without looking at his daughter, Masaru turned and walked away.