“If she could see me now,” she sighed.
She stood at the carven bow of the Guild ship Resplendent Glory, sun on her goggles, hair streaming in the wind. The whirr and clank of atmos-suits and mechabacii was a constant hum, an itch between her shoulders that she couldn’t scratch. The sound of metal boots and engines. Insectoid clicking. Grease and transmission fluid.
Chi.
Buruu stood beside her, glaring at any Guildsman or cloudwalker who drifted too close. The ship bristled with cannon and shuriken-throwers; the crewmen who manned it were all armed. A full platoon of marines in Guild colors drifted about the deck; mercenary soldiers in the employ of the Lotusmen. They eyed the arashitora warily from behind face-length breathers and grubby panes of glass. The Glory was a warship of the “ironclad” class; slow-moving, bullet-shaped, plated with metal the color of rust. The soldiers aboard had trekked north in response to the distress call of Kin’s sundered suit, spoiling for a fight. The marines had been surprised when they’d stumbled across the girl and her thunder tiger, dragging the unconscious, naked flesh of a Guildsman behind them, just two miles from where they’d found his ruined skin. In truth, they had expected to find nothing but a corpse.
Instead, they had found the impossible.
The storm had calmed as the ironclad lifted off from the rock pool, almost as if Susano-ō wanted to be rid of them, bidding them to hurry away from the Iishi and back to their filthy scab. The ship trekked south, retching black fumes onto the mountains silhouetted at its back, dark clouds drifting among snow-capped peaks. Buruu kept his gaze pressed forward, but Yukiko knew he wanted nothing more than to look behind them and stare at the storm. To close his eyes and remember the wind rushing beneath his wings, the lightning playing in his feathers.
Soon.
She ran her hands across his shoulders, fingers entwined in his fur.
Soon, Buruu.
Daichi had watched them leave the Kagé stronghold, Kaori by his side. Yukiko had looked back at the village as they climbed out of the valley, just shadows now among the treetops, hung thick with wisteria perfume. She wondered if she would ever return. It had felt as if she were leaving home all over again, nine years old, packing her bags to depart for Kigen. Her mother had refused to cry or bid their house farewell, her mind already made up that she would hate the city, that they would return once she had begged the Shōgun’s pardon.
Yukiko blinked away the tears, tried to smother them with rage.
She was pregnant.
She gritted her teeth, clenched her fists tight. She must be stone. Unfeeling. Unblinking. They must not see. They must not guess. She must wear the mask, the triumphant daughter of the Black Fox returning from the wilds with a legend by her side, delivering unto the Shōgun his glittering prize. And when he leaned close, guard down, offering her the world as her reward, she would take it. His life. Cut from his chest, beating in the palm of her hand, blood on her face and on her tongue.
She knew what she had to do. But try as she might, again and again, she felt the sorrow swell up past the rage, drowning the spark of anger inside. She felt weak and frail: a tiny girl inside the gears of a great, crushing machine, oiled to murderous precision with the blood of innocent women and children.
Women. And children.
She was pregnant, Buruu. I might have had a baby sister. Or another brother.
She felt steel in him, folded and sharp, light rippling across the surface and glinting on his edge. He flooded her with it, tempered and hard, a resolve forged in lightning and thunder and cooled by the pounding rain. He was strong. So they were strong.
I AM YOUR BROTHER NOW.
On the eve ning of the third day, a Lotusman approached the bow with halting steps, the flat black barrel of a Sendoku shuriken-thrower clasped in its gauntlets. Buruu turned and stared, his subsonic growl making the plates of the Guildsman’s suit chatter and squeal against each other. His claws dug into the deck as if it were butter. The Lotusman stopped a good ten feet away and cleared its throat.
“Kitsune Yukiko.” The voice sounded like a dying lotusfly. “The Artificer you rescued is awake. He requests your presence.”
Yukiko eyed the Lotusman’s weapon, running her hand down Buruu’s cheek.
I will call if I need you.
AS YOU WISH.
“Lead on, sama,” she said.