Jay Kristoff - Kinslayer

Seimi was watching him with narrowed eyes.

“You’ve got balls, street trash, I’ll give you that.”

The yakuza walked to the table, picked up the chi-powered blowtorch, smiling faintly.

“But not for long.”

Yoshi drew a breath.

Held it for forever.

And there on the floor, amidst the anguish and the blood and the agony in the place where her eye had once been, Hana lay curled in a tiny ball and sobbed.

And shook.

And remembered.

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.

Yoshi crashed into their father, shapeless bellowing and flailing fists. He caught him on the cheek, the jaw, the pair falling on the table and smashing it to splinters. Hana stood and screamed over her mother’s body, head throbbing like it might burst, looking at that open, grinning throat and those beautiful blue eyes, empty now and forever.

Her father slapped Yoshi aside, his face purple, sweat and veins and spittle and teeth.

“Little bastard, I’ll kill you,” he growled.

Da raised the broken saké bottle in his good hand, leaned over Yoshi’s crumpled form. Blood on the glass. Blood on his hands. Her mother’s. Now her brother’s too? Too little to stop him. Too small to make a difference. But in that moment, Hana found herself roaring anyway, thoughtless, heedless, throwing herself at his back, beating on him with her tiny fists, screaming, “No, no, no,” as if all the storms in all the world lived inside her lungs. He spun around with horror etched on his face, as if he couldn’t believe she would turn on him. Not his Hana. Not his little flower.

“My gods,” he said. “Your eye…”

He pointed to her face with the blood-slicked bottle, features twisted in anguish.

“Gods above, no. No, not you…”

Yoshi leaped on Da’s back with a roar, wrapping his arms around his throat. Father swung his elbow, connected with Yoshi’s jaw. Teeth clapping together. Blood. Her brother fell amongst the table fragments, limp and senseless.

Da turned and slapped her, spun her like a top. She fell to her knees and he was on her, sitting on her chest and pinning her arms with his thighs. He was so heavy. So heavy she couldn’t breathe. Sobbing. Pleading.

“No, Da. Don’t!”

He pressed his stunted forearm to her throat, broken bottle still clutched in his hand.

“I should’ve known,” he hissed. “I should’ve known it was in you. She’s poisoned you.”

He pointed at their mother, irises glazed over like beach glass, the color of dragon silk.

“It’s in you,” her father was saying. “You gaijin trash. The white devils are in you. But I can see them. I can get them out…”

He held the bottle to her face, inches from Hana’s right eye, broken glass reflected in her iris.

“Da, no!” She shook her head, eyes closed tight. “No, no!”

Then he dug the bottle in.

“I can get them out…”

The world around her was so bright, so sharp, Ayane thought her eyes might bleed.

Faint breeze tickled her ankles and shins, clothing rasped against bare flesh, raising the new hair on her body in goosebumps. When Kin turned to look at her, she could feel his breath on her face, feather-soft. She shivered at the overload of sensation, all this feeling, so fresh and new. But more than that, as she watched the old man by the window, shaking and coughing and slipping toward his grave one breath at a time, she was surprised to feel pity swelling inside her chest. Pity for him, standing so close to the edge, blissfully unaware of what yawned beneath his toes. And pity for herself, that all this would end almost as soon as it began.

The mechabacus chattered on her chest. In her head. Orders. Movements. Questions.

Questions she longed to answer.

Kin was looking at her, a pointed stare, smooth and hard. And so she stood and asked for directions to the privy, bowing low to Daichi before stepping on quiet feet to the stairwell.

Three floors down into the Kagé basement, the battle plan spread on the table, chess pieces and charcoal sticks and rice-paper. Ayane knelt in the corner, face upturned to the ceiling. She ran one finger along her arm, delighting in the sensation, watching the tiny hairs stir and rise. The finger trailed up her shoulder, over the empty output jack at her collarbone, down her breast. And there she found it. Smooth metal and cold transistors. Chittering weight hanging on the cord around her neck. She touched a length of corrugated rubber cable spilling from the mechabacus’s side, held it up to the light, staring at the bayonet studs at its head.

She closed her eyes and felt night air on her skin. Inhaling smoke and ash, listening to the swelling orchestra of the chaos outside. Holding her breath, as if she were about to dive into deep water. And then she plunged the cable into the output port at her collarbone, twisting it home with a sharp snap, exhalation drifting into a sigh.

Her fingers moved across the device’s face, shifting counting beads back and forth in a tiny, intricate dance. She felt the chatter swell, shift focus to the new transmission, the signal that had been missing from the choir these past weeks. Their voices in her head, the nattering, clattering tumbling voices, sounds of the real world drifting away. And as the sensation of her flesh became nothing at all, tears slipped over fluttering lashes and down her cheeks, falling away from flesh almost too insensate to mark their passing.

Almost.

They crawled through the sewer, no louder than the rats around them, sleek, flea-bitten shapes baring crooked yellow fangs at their approach. Kaori in front, sweat soaking through her kerchief, a hand-cranked tungsten torch burning in her hand. The rest of the Kagé behind, single file, breathing heavy in the dank confines of the tunnel’s gut.

They were half a dozen turns into the labyrinth when Kaori paused at a four-way junction, looked back the way they’d come. The Spider peered at her in the dark, eyes narrowed against the stink.

“Do you know where you’re going?” The lieutenant’s whisper was feather-light, almost inaudible behind the grubby cotton covering his mouth.

Kaori scowled, turned around, kept crawling.

They reached a four-way junction and Kaori paused again, looking left and right, chewing her lip. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated.

“This makes no sense,” she whispered.

The Spider cursed beneath his breath, spat into the filth they crawled through.

“Raijin’s drums, what’s the problem?”

“We’re looking for an emergency access shaft, up into the maintenance subbasement. But we should have hit a T-junction, not a crossroads.”

The Spider took Kin’s map from Kaori’s hand, smeared with filth but still legible. The Kagé lieutenant frowned in the stuttering light, looking back the way they’d come, even turning the paper upside down.

“This is wrong,” he said. “We passed a five-way fork after the crossroads. But we shouldn’t have hit that until after the T-junction.”

“That’s what I just said,” Kaori hissed.

“Your Guildsman can’t even draw a godsdamned map.” The paper crumpled in one sodden fist. “Anyone would think the little bastard wanted us lost down here.”