“It is dead, great Lord.” His voice was tiny, choked. “The beast is dead. And my daughter with it.”
The garden was as still as the portraits hanging in the palace halls, as the ancient statues standing among the trees, gray leaves frozen, not a breath of wind. Only Lady Aisha moved, rising up from her seat into a half-crouch, one hand stretching ever so slowly in the direction of her brother. The fire in Yoritomo’s eyes flared and died, breath dragged over a fading smile into strangled lungs. The grip on Masaru’s collar slackened as the Shōgun exhaled, long and ragged, moving his lips at the terminus of breath to frame one trembling word.
“Dead?”
A blink, wiping the confusion from his eyes, rage in its wake. Yoritomo hissed through clenched teeth, “How?”
“The crash, great Lord.” Masaru hung his head, lotus ash caked on dry cheeks, tears swimming in his voice. “They both died in the crash.”
“We were laid low by the might of the heavens themselves, great Lord.” Yamagata rose to stand beside Masaru, keeping his gaze on the floor, hands clasped behind his back. “The Black Fox brought the arashitora to its knees, chained in a cage of iron on the deck. But Raijin . . .” The captain shook his head. “The Thunder God grew angry at the conquest of his offspring. Hurled lightning from the clouds to strike the Child’s inflatable. It was an inferno, spreading like we were made of tinder. I ordered the crew to abandon ship. There was no time to save the arashitora.”
Yoritomo’s glare slipped sideways, over Masaru’s downturned face, coming to rest on the captain. His voice was a whisper.
“Say that again.”
A tiny frown creased Yamagata’s brow. “Great Lord?”
“Say it again.” Yoritomo took one step closer to the cloudwalker. “You ordered the crew . . .”
“I ordered the crew to abandon ship.” Yamagata swallowed, pawed beneath his goggles at the sweat burning his eyes. “There was no time to—”
A hollow boom, thunderous, too close. A rush of air, the brittle crackling of tiny sparks. A sound Masaru would never forget. Yamagata’s head rocked back on his shoulders, the back of his skull popping like an overfull balloon, full of bright red sweets. Masaru flinched away, spattered in something warm and wet. The captain’s body seized tight, rose up on the balls of his feet and tumbled backward like a marionette as the music died. Somewhere in the distance there was a shriek, painted lips muffled by pale, grasping hands. The cloudwalker’s body hit the path, stones washed smooth by the hands of ancient rivers, now washed again in a flood of sticky gray and scarlet. Heels beat a staccato rhythm against the rock, a thin, broken-finger wisp of smoke rising from the shattered lens and bloody mess where Yamagata’s right eye used to be, another drifting from the barrel of the iron-thrower in Yoritomo’s outstretched hand.
Soft sobbing from the direction of the maple trees. Aisha’s hissed command for silence.
Masaru swallowed thickly, eyes still downturned, refusing to look at the shattered lump of carrion bleeding on the stones beside him. In the distance, he could hear the sounds of the bay, the Market Square. The churn and growl of sky-ship motors, the reverb of a thousand voices, the song of life swelling beyond these walls. He looked up at the sky, eyes narrowed against Lady Amaterasu’s light burning on the horizon. He thought of his wife.
His son.
His daughter.
The years that had flown by so quickly, the span of days and nights that now seemed only a heartbeat long, just one more heartbeat remaining until it was all over.
He almost welcomed the thought.
Yoritomo raised the iron-thrower, levelled it at Masaru’s head. “Failure,” he hissed.
And Masaru closed his eyes.
22 Daiyakawa
“Come out here, you lying whore!” Yukiko sat upright, blinked in the steam. The candles had burned low, dim shadows playing on the bathhouse walls, pale wax pooled at their feet. The shout had come from outside, Kaori’s voice, shattering the eve ning hush. Had it been aimed at her?
Buruu?
MONKEYS ANGRY. CARRYING STEEL.
She closed her eyes and looked through Buruu’s, feeling their muscles tense,
their claws digging into the branch below, aggression flaring out along their veins. Kaori stood before them, a cadre of twenty men behind, Isao holding a struggling Kin. The boy looked sickly pale and terrified: eyes bruised, flesh blistered, unsure of where he was, or who these people were. Only certain of the blade at his throat.