Jay Kristoff - Kinslayer

The things lunged with those silver limbs, terrifyingly fast, cutting into her right arm and knocking the katana away. Michi’s riposte with the wakizashi opened one along its belly, up into its chest, and the thing shrieked, distorted and metallic, stumbling backward and trying to staunch the glistening sausage-flow of innards bulging from the rend.

The final Guildsman filled the air with silver, Michi shifting onto her back foot as needles whipped and whistled about her. She crouched low, aimed a sweeping kick at its ankles, and hampered by the buckles and skirts, the Guildsman was forced backward. Its heel hit a puddle of blood, and with a squeak across polished pine, it lost balance. Spinning on the spot, Michi hurled the chainwakizashi at the thing’s chest, punching through the mechabacus with the shrieking saw of steel teeth and a rain of brightly colored sparks.

The Guildsman stared at the blade mutely, sinking to its knees. Retrieving her chainkatana from the bloody ground, Michi swung it without ceremony. The thing tumbled forward, headless, silver limbs twitching as if in a fit.

“Michi,” said a voice. “Thank the gods.”

She saw her then, throat seizing tight, and it was all she could do to choke out a reply.

“Aisha…”

She lay on a grand oaken bed, red silk pulled up to her chin, pillows all about her. Tomo, her small black-and-white terrier, sat beside her, growling even as his little tail wagged. Machines were arrayed on either side of her; towering contraptions set with dials and gauges and bellows, transistors and vacuum tubes. Michi dashed across the room, sheathing the blade at her waist, grabbing Aisha’s hand.

“No time to explain, we have to move…”

She tugged hard, trying to drag Aisha from her bed. The Lady flopped forward, hair across her face, a deadweight sack of meat and bones. The silk sheet slipped away from her chin, bunched about her waist, and Michi realized with growing horror that the machines at her bedside, the cables spilling from their outputs … all of them were snaking across the floor, up onto the bed, and from there …

Into Aisha.

Into her arms. Into the bayonet studs puncturing her flesh. Into the device laid upon her chest, thin brass ribs and diodes, the bellows in the machine beside her moving up and down in time with her breath.

“My gods…” Michi whispered, pressing Aisha back into the pillows. “What have they done to you?”

“Saved my life.”

Her voice was hollow, an almost imperceptible reverberation at the end of every word.

“Forcing my heart to beat, my lungs to breathe.” Her eyes gleamed with the beginnings of tears. “Amaterasu, protect me…”

The tears broke, spilling over her lashes and down pallid cheeks.

“I can’t feel anything, Michi.” Aisha’s voice became a whisper, choked and tiny. “My brother, he…” She screwed her eyes shut. “I can’t feel anything below my neck…”

“No,” Michi breathed. “No, that can’t be. I saw you at the sky-docks.”

“Propped up like a corpse in its box. Gagged behind my breather. Plugged into that accursed chair and the contraption beneath. All for show.”

“But you were seen on the balcony…”

Aisha’s eyes flickered to one of the machines; a vertical trolley with a pyramid of wheels flanking either side, lined with gleaming buckles and belts.

“They take me out on the balcony in that,” she whispered. “Strapping me in and trundling me into the sun. Just long enough that a stray courtier or bushiman could see me, to quash any rumors of my death. They were going to haul me to my wedding in it.”

“Good gods…”

Michi took Aisha’s hand, but it was cold and limp as corpse flesh. The Lady’s skin was pale, run through with blue veins, fingers so thin they looked like twigs. Michi looked up and down the bed, tears spilling down through powder and kohl and blood to patter upon the sheets like rain.

In the distance, a hollow boom rocked the city, screams ringing through the night. Aisha’s eyes flickered to the window.

“What is happening out there?”

“I don’t know. I think the Kagé are attacking Kigen. But they’ve drawn Hiro’s forces away from the palace. I can get you out of here.”

“I cannot lift a finger, love.” Aisha looked into Michi’s eyes. “I cannot feel a thing.”

“No, it’s these machines.” Michi whirled on the banks of equipment, desperate eyes roaming the impossible stretch of diode and cog and cable. “They’ve stopped you moving. The Guild have tricked you. They’ve just made you think—”

“I felt it, Michi,” Aisha said. “I felt it when Yoritomo broke my neck.”

“No. That’s not true. It can’t be.”

“She got away?” Light flared in Aisha’s eyes, hot and desperate. “Yukiko? She and the thunder tiger escaped?”

“Hai,” Michi nodded, blinked back burning tears. “The people sing songs about her, Aisha. Arashi-no-odoriko, they call her.”

“Stormdancer,” Aisha breathed. “It was worth it, then.”

A gurgling intake of breath tore Michi’s eyes away, down to the Guildsman slumped against the wall. It held an armful of its own innards, spilling purple and wet from its torn gut, the sundered mechabacus coughing counting beads into its lap. Michi glanced from the Guildsman to the tubes in Aisha’s chest and arms. She snatched up her chainkatana, murder in her eyes.

The Guildsman looked up at her approach, wet breath rattling in its lungs. It keeled over, choking, clawing at its back. And with a sound like breaking eggshells, the silver orb on its spine split open, and a fist-sized metallic object tumbled out onto the floorboards.

Michi stepped back, fearing some kind of explosive. But the object unfurled eight tiny clockwork legs, stared at her with a red, glowing eye.

“Tang!Tang!Tang!Tang!” sang the spider-drone, as if outraged at the murder of its mother. Michi stepped forward and struck, scattering the floorboards with torn clockwork and a shower of bright blue sparks.

“They know,” Aisha whispered. “They know you are here. They will be coming.”

“Let them,” Michi hissed.

“I will not have you die for me.”

“Who said anything about—”

Michi heard it before she felt it; a distant rumble, as if a long-slumbering giant was yawning and stretching in his cradle beneath the earth. The ground trembled, the whole palace shaking, dust drifting from the eaves. Little Tomo yowled at the sky, hopped in small circles on the bedclothes. Michi ran to the bed and threw herself over Aisha, holding her tight as the palace shook on its foundations, windows cracking at the corners. She lay there until the earthquake died, trying not to notice the smell of metal and grease seeping from her mistress’s pores.

“The gods are angry,” Aisha breathed. “The reckoning comes.”

“Aisha, I have to get you out of here.”

“Will you carry me, Michi-chan? All by yourself?”

They heard a distant booming; heavy weight pounding against the iron-shod doors to the bedchambers. Shouted demands to open in the name of various clanlords. Tiger. Phoenix. Dragon.

“You cannot bring these machines, Michi.” Aisha was looking at her now, tears gone. “They are my lungs. They are my heart. Without them, I would have gone to the peace I earned long ago.”

“But I can’t just leave you here!”

“No.”

Aisha looked into her eyes, a small, sad smile on her face.

“No, you cannot.”

Michi blinked, lips parted as she tried to breathe. “You can’t ask me that…”

“I would do it myself.” A bitter smile. “But if I could wield the blade, there would be no call for its mercy.”

“Aisha, no…”