“You blamed her for Satoru.” Yukiko blinked back the tears. “You drove her away.”
Masaru’s expression darkened, as if clouds had covered the sun. “No. Satoru was my fault. I should have been there. I should have been a father to you. I was never very good at that, I’m afraid.”
“You are afraid,” she growled. “All your life you’ve been running away. You left us alone to go on your mighty hunts. You left your wife’s bed for another woman’s. You leave me every time you suck down a lungful of that stinking weed. You’re a coward.”
Masaru sat up slowly, swung his legs over the edge of the hammock and dropped to the floor. His eyes betrayed his rage, flashing like polished jet, clear of smoke. He stepped closer.
“If I were a coward, I would have run as your mother bid me.” His voice was soft, dangerous. “I would never have returned to Shōgun Yoritomo’s side after Sensei Rikkimaru died. She bid me to become an oath-breaker. Dishonored. Shamed.”
“And if you had, she would still be here.”
“Yukiko, I am warning you . . .”
“Satoru would still be alive.”
He slapped her then, an open hand across her face, the crack of flesh on flesh seeming louder than the song from the arashitora’s wings. She lost her balance on the stool and toppled over backward, head slamming into the wall, hair splayed across her face.
“Godsdamn you, girl,” her father hissed. “I was sworn to the Shōgun. I still am to this day. If I break my word, he will take everything from me. Everything, do you understand?”
What about me, she wanted to cry. You’d still have me.
He stared down at his hand, at the palm print on her cheek. He looked suddenly wretched, an old man, body slowly turning to poison, life ebbing away one fix at a time.
“One day you will understand, Yukiko,” he said. “One day you will see that we must sometimes sacrifice for the sake of something greater.”
“Honor.” She spat the word, unwanted tears welling in her eyes.
“Among other things.”
“You’re a godsdamned liar. There’s no honor in what you do. You’re a servant. A rent boy who butchers helpless animals at the behest of a coward.”
Masaru hung his head, teeth gritted, hands curled into fists. His breath was low and measured, trembling in his nostrils. His eyes flickered to hers, glazed with anger.
“I hate you,” she hissed.
Masaru opened his mouth to speak, and the world turned sideways. A tremendous boom rang out above the ship, shattering the small glass porthole and making Yukiko wince. They were both tossed across the room, walls rushing forward with outstretched arms to embrace them, unforgiving, hard as stone. Her forehead split on the wood, stars in her eyes as she and her father tumbled to the ground.
The whole ship trembled, her timbers shaking beneath their feet as if in the grip of an earthquake. The sound of boiling vapor filled the sky.
Yukiko opened her eyes, blinking away the blood as the Child rocked beneath them. Through the tiny cracked porthole, she could see the clouds were painted with flickering orange.
The acrid tang of smoke stained the air.
They were on fire.
13 Descending
Staggering. Blood and swelling gluing her eye closed. Her father’s hands on her shoulder, firm. Deck bucking beneath their feet. A stumble, a fall. Hands dragging her up. Her father’s voice, from far away.
“Keep moving!” Onto the deck. Light blinding above them, bright as the sun. Too close, heat curling the ghost-pale hair on her arms, leaving behind tiny black cinders. A roar, terrifying, crackling across the rigging with ruinous, hungry hands. The nightmare sound that woke cloudwalkers in the dark, stomachs in knots, soaked in sweat. Fire.
Fire in the sky.
The balloon was ablaze. The canvas had spilled wide open, the hydrogen within clasping hands with the lightning strike and giving birth to a conflagration, sucking the very breath from their lungs. The heat of a funeral pyre beat upon their backs. Screaming men, feet running across the deck, panicked voices. The hiss of rain, great gouts of pitch-black smoke rising in a veil from the marriage between fire and water. Vertigo swelled, the clutch of gravity denied by the speed of their descent. Falling.
They were falling.
Dragged up the ladder to the pilot’s deck, vice grip on her wrists, press of bodies all around her. Across the shifting wood, steering wheel spinning free, Captain Yamagata’s voice rising above the din.
“Masaru-san! Quickly!”
She felt hands on her, dragging her through a metal hatchway, the volume of the world dropping to a dull, reverberating roar. The smell of sweat, tang of iron in her nostrils, copper on her lips. Yukiko blinked away the blood, looked around her, trying to focus. She was surrounded by heaving, sweating bodies, packed into the confines of the life raft fixed to the Thunder Child’s stern. It was filled to capacity, two frantic cloudwalkers working to uncouple the small beetle-shaped pod from its burning mother.
“Hurry up, we’re going down!”