he said?”
Masaru hung his head, swallowing thickly, “ ‘If you defy me again, I will take
everything you have left. Everything.’ ” A low growl. “ ‘And I will hurt it first.’ ” He punched the floor beneath him, splitting his knuckles, bone grating
across stone.
“Then he smiled down at you and walked away, without a backward glance.”
Masaru ran a hand across his eyes, smearing his face with blood. “I couldn’t
tell you. If you knew what he had done, he might have seen you as a threat.
And so I told you she had left. I told everyone that she had left. It was easy to
believe. I was never home. I had been unfaithful. But I loved her, Ichigo. Despite everything, I did not stop loving her for a moment. And you were all I
had left of her.”
He looked up at her, face streaked with blood and grief. “I could not lose
you too.”
The tears rolled unheeded down her cheeks, pattering on the floor with
the sound of rain. Washing it all away, the hate, the anger, leaving her with the
knowledge that she had wronged this man. That he had shackled himself to a
madman’s throne so her life would be spared.
“Forgive me,” he whispered, squeezing her fingers.
“Forgive me,” she begged.
He reached through the bars and pulled her close, the metal between them pressing into their flesh as they embraced. She could feel the hard muscle coiled beneath gray skin, the strength in his arms beneath the lotus tremors. But it was nothing compared to the will it must have taken to kneel every day,
to give up all he was for the sake of his daughter. A strength beyond strength. She could hear the words he had spoken to her on the Thunder Child, ringing in her mind as clearly as if he had said them aloud. And at last, she understood what he had meant.
“One day you will see that we must sometimes sacrifice for the sake of something greater.”
“I’m going to get you out of here,” she whispered, holding him tight. “I
promise.”
“Shateigashira Kensai, exalted Second Bloom of Chapterhouse Kigen.” Hideo’s pale voice traveled the length of the reception hall and into the throne room, up the woven red carpet and among the high tapestries swaying in the afternoon breeze. The minister clapped his staff against the floor three times, and the Iron Samurai manning the doorway stepped aside as one, perfectly timed; a silicone-slick machine precision to match that of the Lotusman.
The courtiers gathered in the hall outside parted respectfully, fluttering fans in front of painted faces and elaborate breathers, eyes staring behind goggles of tinted glass or slitted against the long afternoon light shearing through the windows. Representatives from every zaibatsu in Shima were present at Yoritomo’s court. Emissaries from the Daimyo of the Ryu clan stood in their rippling blue silks, obi fashioned like dragon scales. A cluster of Kitsune nobles, skin pale as snow, thick as thieves, shrouded in kimono of whispering black, glaring across the court at their Dragon neighbors and muttering darkly behind their fans. Beautiful men and women from the Fushicho lands, flesh around their eyes shaded with the color of flame, blond streaks bleached in their hair, breathtaking finery the hue of newborn sunflowers bleeding through to vibrant orange. As always, the Phoenix did their best to ignore the obvious enmity between Dragon and Fox, concentrating instead on outshining both. Of course, the vast majority of the assembly was clad in red: brilliant, bloody red, the symbol of the Tiger clan embroidered on their robes in precious golden thread. Each of them fell silent now, the innuendo and gossip fading to nothing as Shateigashira Kensai, Second Bloom, the voice of the Guild in Kigen city himself stepped through the double doors and approached the throne room.
The hiss of gears, the song of the mechabacus on his chest. Heavy tread sounded upon the carpet, the dying day glittering in those blood-red, faceted eyes. Kensai was a monster of a man: six feet tall and almost as broad, impressive bulk stuffed inside an indulgently decorated atmos-suit. The metal was crafted to emulate hard lines of muscle, embossed with gothic flourishes and filigree in the pattern of a tiger’s stripes. But his face was an anomaly; the features of a beautiful gilded youth, retching up a lungful of chattering iron cable.