Jay Kristoff - Kinslayer

The table was set with cracked plates and a posy of dried grass. Their father knelt at the head, already halfway into his bottle, cheeks and nose aglow with broken capillaries. The stump where his right hand used to be was unwrapped, shiny and pink. Medals hung on the wall behind him, remnants of an old life, gleaming like seashells on a deserted beach. Trophies for the hero; the lowborn Burakumin translator who saved the lives of seventeen Kitsune bushimen. A platoon of blooded clansmen saved by the heroism of a clanless dog.

Their mother stood in the tiny kitchen, boiling rice with some seasoning she’d scrounged from gods knew where. Pale skin, vacant blue-eyed stare, black ink under her fingernails from when she’d last dyed her hair.

Just another trophy for the hero.

Hana washed up, knelt to await the meal in silence. The fear was there, always, hovering in the back of her mind. She listened to her father pour another shot, shadows in the room growing longer, the darkness at the head of the table slowly deepening. A weight sat on her shoulders, the question always hanging in the air waiting to be answered.

What will set him off tonight?

Yoshi knelt opposite her, shappo on his head, tied beneath his chin. He’d won the hat from a city boy in a game of oicho-kabu three days ago and he was terribly proud of it, strutting in front of her like an emerald crane in a courting dance, laughing as hard as split lips would let him.

“Take that thing off,” their father growled.

Here it comes.

“Why?” Yoshi asked.

“Because you look like a damned fool. That’s a man’s hat. It’s too big for you.”

“Aren’t you always telling me to be a man?”

No. Don’t push it, Yoshi.

“I think he looks very handsome.”

Mother smiled as she placed a pot of steaming rice on the table. Tired blue eyes, full of love, crinkled at the edges as she stared at her son. Her Little Man.

Father glanced at her, and Hana saw the look on his face. Her heart sank into her belly, tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth.

“What the hells would you know?”

Clenched teeth. A spray of spittle.

Oh, gods …

Mother turned paler still, bottom lip quivering. She took a half step back, terrified and mute. To say anything at that point would be making it worse—to beg or apologize, even to whimper. As helpless as a field mouse in the shadow of black wings.

Da snatched up the saké bottle in his good hand, knuckles white as he rose to his feet.

“You worthless gaijin whore, I said what would you know?”

And just like that, just for that, he swung.

Hana saw the bottle connect with her mother’s jaw, time slowing to a crawl, watching the spray of red and teeth. She felt something warm and sticky splash onto her cheek, saw her father’s face twisted beyond reason or recognition. Screaming he should have left her there, in her accursed homeland with her bastard people, and he flourished the stump where his sword hand had been and roared.

“Look what they took from me!” Face purpling, skin taut and blood-flushed. “Look at it! And all I have to show for it is you!”

He loomed over their mother, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, Hana saw rage burning in those brilliant blue eyes.

“You pig.” Mother’s words were slurred around her broken jaw. “You drunken slaver pig. Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea what I was?”

Spit on his lips as he raised the bottle again. “I know what you’re going to be…”

Yoshi opened his mouth to yell, rising from his knees, hands outstretched.

The bottle fell, a long, scything arc ending in her throat and a spray of blood, thick and hot and bright. And Hana did what any thirteen-year-old girl would have done at that moment.

She started screaming.

Explosions tore across the night, dragging Hana from her reverie, back into the world beyond the window glass. She saw the harbor was ablaze, firelight spray-painted across southern skies. Great walls of black cloud rumbled and crashed above the city, the smell of burning chi entwined with the growing promise of rain.

“Izanagi’s balls,” Yoshi shook his head. “Someone’s riled about not getting invited to the Shōgun’s wedding…”

Hana tried to shake off the dread, closed her eye, frowned. “I can’t see much. Can’t feel many rats around.”

“Fire is making the little ones nervous. Big ones are opening shop on a fresh corpse two blocks north. Dinnertime.”

Hana left her vantage point near the window, knelt by the table, rocking a little, back and forth. She stared at Yoshi’s straw hat, at the jagged, broken-bottle cut running through the brim. Refusing to remember.

“Where the hells is this boy?” Yoshi hissed.

“Maybe we could go look for him?”

“You fixing to go outside in all this?”

“Jurou’s been gone all day, Yoshi. Aren’t you worried?”

“Safe to say.”

Yoshi chewed a fingernail, falling mute. Hana looked toward the window again.

“Gods, it sounds like the whole city’s coming apart…”

She reached out again with the Kenning, felt dozens of tiny sparks converging to the north. She could feel their hunger, taste their stink at the corners of her mouth. She reached toward Daken, prowling western rooftops, just on the edge of word-range.

There’s a group of rats north of the hotel.

… so . .?

So be careful on the way back.

… i am a cat …

There’s a lot of them.

… meow . .?

All right, fine. If you get eaten, don’t bitch to me. What can you see?

… people running fighting men in white iron with growling swords …

Can I use your eyes?

… of course …

Lashes brushed her cheeks as she slipped behind Daken’s pupils. He was looking down into a cramped alley three floors below his perch, and she clutched the table, fighting off a sudden rush of vertigo. The docks around Kigen Bay were ablaze, black smoke and seething flames. The clouds were full of Phoenix sky-ships, darting and weaving like swallows, occasionally opening up with barrages of shuriken-thrower fire into alleys and houses.

chug!chug!chug!chug!

They could smell stagnant water, urine and trash below, ripe with flies’ eggs. Chi exhaust, ash and dust, the reek of pollution that had seeped into the city’s skin. And high above it all, drifting arm in arm with the smoke came the stink of charred fat. The reek of burning hair.

Hana could hear the crowd through his ears, roaring flames, ringing bells.

Be careful out there, little brother.

… still have one or two lives left …

She broke the contact with half a smile, mind drifting over the city. Feeling around one last time for corpse-rats, trying to catch a glimpse of the Kagé who must be behind these attacks. She found most of the Upside vermin gathered in that swarming knot two blocks north. They were a multitude, too grizzled to fear the flames, knuckle-deep in fresh meat and fighting amongst the guts. But a short spit from the edges of the feast, Hana felt a faint spark of distress.

The girl frowned. Pressed her lips into a bloodless line. Focusing tighter, she centered on the pain’s source. Felt the tear of broken glass in his insides, rolling onto his back, tail tucked between his legs as he screeched. Tasted his blood on his tongue, lolling from their mouths, clawing at their own belly to make the agony go away.