“Who are you people?” Kin moaned, voice taut with pain.
Daichi knelt in front of Kin, glaring into the boy’s eyes. “We are the flame to cauterize your disease. Plant by plant, throat by throat, until you drown in ten times the blood you have spilled for your precious chi.” He hawked a mouthful of phlegm, spat into the boy’s face. “You say the lotus must bloom. We say it must burn.”
“Burn.” The word was echoed by a dozen other voices. Not raised in anger, but soft with menace, rolling among the gathering like a prayer.
“I knew it,” Yukiko breathed. “You’re the Kagé.”
Daichi looked at her, eyes narrowed, as if weighing her on a scale inside his head. He glanced at Buruu, running finger and thumb down through the length of his mustache, his mouth a thin, hard line.
“We are the Kagé,” he nodded. “We are the clenched fist. The raised voice. The fire to burn away the Lotus Guild, and free Shima from the grip of their wretched weed.”
“You burn the fields,” Yukiko scowled.
“We burn more than that.”
“The refinery fire.” Yukiko searched their faces.
“The first of many. The Guild’s propaganda machine calls it an accident. But their lies will not shield them much longer. We have infiltrated the airwaves. We have fists in every metropolis in Shima now. Shadows in the Kazumitsu court itself. Closer to the Shōgun than he could ever dream.”
“People died in that fire.” Yukiko looked around at the crowd in disbelief. “Not just Guildsmen. Innocent people.”
“Lotus is killing this country.” Daichi stood, hands still clasped behind him. “Choking land and sky, enslaving all it does not outright destroy. Absolute power over the state rests with a single man who rules by fiat, not merit, empowered by an elite that the common man can never join, nor understand. A regime of deception and murder, blood in the gutters, de cades of war on foreign shores, all for the sake of more chi.”
The eve ning air grew more oppressive, a cloying blanket of sticky tropical heat, slicking Yukiko with sweat. She began to feel very alone, and a long way from home.
NOT ALONE. I AM HERE.
“Innocent people,” she repeated.
“Sacrifices must be made,” said Kaori. “The people of Shima are addicted to chi. The system will not die willingly, it must be killed. Those enslaved will adapt or perish, like any addict denied his fix. But better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”
“That’s not your decision to make!” Raised voice, Yukiko’s hands clenched into fists, eyes flashing. “People can decide for themselves!”
“Can they?” Daichi’s tone was a counterpoint to her own, measured and soft. “Every word they read or hear is Guild controlled. There is no truth, only the reality that the Communications Ministry weaves. When was the last time you heard the wireless tell you about a farmer who went under? A daughter raped by a nobleman whom the law will not touch? A species that ceased to exist?”
“Well, what about all of you?” she demanded. “You made up your own minds.”
“Have you heard of the Daiyakawa riots?”
“. . . No.”
“Nor would you if this scum had his way.” Daichi kicked Kin in the stomach, the boy grunting and curling into a ball. “Ten years ago, the Prefect of Daiyakawa province allowed his farmers to stop growing foodstuffs and switch their crops to lotus. It was worth five times its weight in any other harvest, after all. The problem was, the government had designated Daiyakawa a breadbasket province—they had been commanded to grow nothing but rice, according to the administration’s grand design.” Daichi stroked his mustache, scowling. “Such is the state of affairs in the countryside of this nation. A man cannot even choose what he plants in the ground any more.
“It did not matter to the Shōgun if Daiyakawa’s farmers were forced to tithe so much of their harvest that they could barely feed their families. No matter that their children starved to death surrounded by fields of food. And so, when the farmers saw that there was more money to be made in growing lotus, they decided to claim a slice of that profit for themselves. The Shōgun ordered them to desist, to sow their fields with food again. They rioted, burned the local guardhouse, killed the magistrate. So Shōgun Kaneda and Minister Hideo ordered in the army.
“I was the captain sent to quell them.”
Daichi’s voice was shaking, he took a deep breath before continuing.
“Have you ever seen Iron Samurai in action against men of flesh and blood, Yukiko-chan? Farmers, with empty bellies and pitchforks for spears?”
Yukiko said nothing, a look of horror on her face.
“Kaneda sent his herald when we were done, decreeing that any farmer who sowed lotus would suffer the same fate as the prefect. Then we dragged the man into the street and executed his family in front of him. Wife. Two sons. A baby girl.” Daichi swallowed, looked down at his trembling hands. “Then we forced him to commit seppuku.”