“I am no advocate of the Guild, or their views.” A small, clanking shrug. “The Guildsmen give us many amazing gifts. Sky-ships, chainkatana, ō-yoroi. Yet I do not understand how this gives them the right to dictate morality to my Lord or his people. They are not sworn to the Code of Bushido. They are mechanics, artisans. Not priests. Not to me.”
The quiet conviction in his voice sent a tingle down Yukiko’s spine, and she stared deep into his eyes, resisting the urge to just plunge in and drown. The revelation that he resented the Guild was a welcome relief, but Buruu’s warning was an insistent echo in her head. Even by a fool’s estimation, this samurai was now her keeper. Her jailer.
A jailer with the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen . . .
“There is nothing you could do that would repel me, Lady.”
Yukiko could barely hear his voice over the sound of her heart pounding in her chest.
RAIJIN, TAKE ME NOW.
She shot Buruu a withering glance as he rolled over on his back and pawed at the sky.
HAVE MERCY ON ME, FATHER. TAKE MY WINGS. CHAIN ME TO STINKING EARTH. BUT THIS TORTURE I CANNOT ENDURE.
Oh, shut it.
“Come on.” She glanced at the Samurai, nodded toward the exit. “I have to see my father. If you’re to be my babysitter now, I suppose you’d better come along.”
She turned to leave, sparing one last glance for the arashitora on his chain. He looked thoroughly miserable, a beast of thunder and open sky caged in a filthy pit built for murder and mindless bloodshed. Her heart swelled with pity, the knowledge that if not for her, he would never have come here. I’ll be back, Buruu. Very soon.
He blinked at her, eyes of molten honey. To a stranger, his face would have seemed utterly impassive. No lips to smile, no brows to frown. Just a mask of sleek lines and white feathers, smooth and motionless. But she could see it in the tilt of his head, the way his tail switched from side to side, the rise and fall of his flanks as he breathed.
She could feel it inside him, the rock he had set his back against, the core of his being. A compass that would steer him through this darkness, this torture at the hands of insects, safely out the other side into blinding lightning and howling wind. It would lead him home.
It was love.
He nodded, curled his head beneath one crippled wing.
I WILL BE HERE.
26 Portents
It was waiting for him every time he closed his eyes. A shadow in a darkened room, breath held in anticipation of the candle’s flame that would give it life. Yet he could feel it lingering even when he was awake, seen or unseen, just a nightfall away. A part of him as integral as the heart that pumped his blood, the metal skin encasing his flesh.
The vision.
It had been with him since his Awakening, the night they took him from his bed and pushed the smoke into his lungs and opened his eyes to the future that awaited him. And in that awful moment he had seen what he would become. Witnessed the horror and majesty of it all, listening to the grim march of inevitability inside his skull. And from that day to this, the dream had been lurking in the warm dark space behind his eyelids. And he had been dreaming of a way to escape it.
He heard their voices now. Hundreds of bloody eyes upturned, hundreds of faces watching him with as much fervor as could be found in smooth lifeless brass. Hands held high. Metallic voices echoing on blank stone. They were calling him as they always did.
“Kin-san.”
And he answered as he always did.
“That is not my name.”
“Kioshisan.”
The voice was harsh and metallic, the drone of a fat and hungry lotusfly, pulling him into the harsh light of waking. He blinked away the blur of sleep, pawed at his eyelids in the dirty halogen glow, searching for the source of the sound. He was lying in a metal cot, gray sheets, walls of sweating yellow stone at his back. He recognized the hum of the air filtration system and the groan and clank of great engines throbbing in the background. It was a tune he had lived with since the day of his birth; the lullaby of the Kigen chapterhouse. The air was moist, and a sheen of sweat on his flesh made the gauze at his throat and shoulder itch, crinkling like dry paper as he ran his hand across it. He realized that he was still skinless, but they had already plugged him back into a mechabacus, bayonet fixtures speared at his collarbone, under his ribs, relays worming toward his spinal column. Out of instinct, he flicked several beads across the device to test the transmission conduits, and received a brief acknowledgment inreturn.
“Kioshisan.”