The girl stood on the sky-ship’s deck, holding her mother’s hand. Eyes bright with wonder as they stared at the city beneath them, wet with the sting of chi smoke. It hung in a pall over the city streets; a blanket covering the dozens, hundreds, thousands of people that scurried back and forth, a flood of sights and sounds, underscored with that oily, rancid smell. Kigen city was a living, breathing thing, a beast with a constantly writhing hide, people clinging to its flanks like an army of ticks. She had never imagined anything like it in all her life.
From above, it was intricate, beautiful and terrible, a winding maze of squeezeways and alleys twisting between the cracking sores of bleached buildings. The broad square of brick at its heart, cobbled arteries worming off in labyrinthine patterns that mimicked a maniac’s scrawl. A great cluster of broad, grand roofs on the hill, red flags crowing among its stunted gardens. A five-sided fist of yellow stone amidst a growth of hunchbacked, abandoned slaughter houses, the great nest of pipes and tanks and vomiting chimneys that must be the refinery, a rusted length of intestine spilling from its bowels and leading off north toward First House. Winding serpents of filthy river water, spilling out into a bay of char and floating refuse, shoals of garbage drifting on a dirty sea breeze. The streets were choked with a black-tongued haze, a dirty stain smeared across the skies, hovering over the crust of concrete and brick on the harbor’s skin.
The ship kissed the sky-spire as gentle as the summer rain. Cloudwalkers lashed them tight; thick rope knotted on corroded couplings. Yukiko climbed onto her father’s back, breathless with excitement as he descended the rungs. Her new goggles slipped down her nose, and she tightened the strap behind her head. She looked up at her mother climbing down after them, swift and sure, the fox tattoo on her arm proudly displayed for all to see.
“Mother,” Yukiko called. “Do you see all the people?”
“Hai, Yukiko,” she smiled down at her daughter. “I see them.” “Father, why are there so many?”
“This is the capital of Shima.” He smiled, ruffling her hair as his feet touched
the ground. “People from all over the Empire come here. Brave warriors, traders, priests. Sooner or later, every man turns his feet to Kigen.” Masaru helped Yukiko scramble up onto his shoulders. She peered at the throng, face alight with wonder. Her mother stepped down beside them, wrinkled her nose.
“Before he turned his feet here, perhaps he should have washed them.” Yukiko giggled.
“Naomi, please . . .” Masaru said.
“Mother’s right,” Yukiko nodded. “It smells here.”
“You’ll get used to it, Ichigo.” Masaru pinched her toes, eliciting a yelp. The motor-rickshaw waited for them, strange men with growling swords ushering them inside. They rode through the crowded streets and Yukiko pressed her nose to the pockmarked glass, watching the people drift by, wave after wave of seething flesh. The giant samurai in their clanking armor, the grubby children fighting in the gutters, the sararīmen and neo-chōnin, pedlars and beggars. And such a noise! Noise like she’d never heard, near deafening compared to their little bamboo valley, breeze whispering through the stalks in breaths a lifetime wide.
She wished Satoru could see it all.
Further up the Palace Way, an impossible cluster of towers and buildings beckoned, tiger flags waving in the toxic wind, daubed in red and gold, bigger than any building she had ever seen.
“Who lives there, father?”
“That is the Shōgun’s palace. We will visit it often, if we decide to stay. Would you like that?”
Yukiko looked uncertain.
“Can we fish there? Are there butterflies?”
“No,” her mother said, staring at her father. “There are no butterflies here, Yukiko. No birds. No flowers either.”
“What is that?” the girl cried, pressing against the window. Beyond the glass, a strange figure was clomping through the crowd, clad in chattering brass, all cogs and wheels and spinning teeth. Its head looked like the fighting mantis that used to clash across the bamboo forest in spring. Its eyes were red as blood, glittering in the muted sun.
Her mother had answered softly, for her ears only.
“That is your enemy.”
“Impure.”
Yukiko whispered the word, watching the Iishi crags grow smaller and smaller, tiny lightning flashing among the now-distant storms. It was such a simple thing; two syllables, the press of her lips together, one on another, tongue rolling upon her teeth. She breathed it again, as if savoring the shape. Tasting it.
“Impure.”
It was a word their mother had taught them, her and Satoru, sitting by the fireside late one night and swimming in their hound’s mind. She told the twins not all people had the Kenning; that there were some who could never know an animal’s thoughts or feelings, who were locked in the prison of simple sight, sound and smell.
“And they are jealous,” she’d warned. “So you must never tell another of the gift, not unless you trust them with your life. For if the Guild discover it, they will take it from you.”
The twins had nodded then, pretended to understand. Yukiko could remember those words like they were yesterday.