Jay Kristoff - Kinslayer

“No wedding. No Shōgun.” Aisha licked at dry, cracked lips. “Do not leave me like this, love. They have picked over my bones enough. Dragged me from the quiet dark into wretched daylight. Show them I am theirs no longer, Michi. Tell them I am done.”

Michi couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see for the tears.

“I can’t…”

“The last of Kazumitsu’s seed, that’s what they called me. As if that’s all I was. Just a womb to produce another heir for this cursed empire. And do you know what they did, Michi? Gods, could anyone begin to imagine?”

Aisha stared into space, her voice paling to a whisper.

“I was too fragile to receive Hiro’s seed in the usual fashion. And he found no lust for me in my current condition. But the line of Kazumitsu needed its precious son. The Guild needed to cement their Shōgun’s legitimacy. So do you know what they used?” She gritted her teeth, spit the words. “A metal tube. A handful of lubricant. As if I were cattle, Michi. As if I were livestock .”

“My gods…”

“Lord Izanagi, deliver me.” Aisha turned her eyes to the ceiling, voice cracking. “Have mercy upon me, great Maker. If never before this moment, take mercy upon me now.”

“Aisha, I can’t…”

“You can.”

“I can’t.”

“You must .”

Michi held her breath, squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head over and over. She heard the distant sound of heavy blows on iron-shod doors. Splitting timbers.

“I asked when you raised your hand to me, remember?” Aisha said. “I told you I would ask everything of you. I asked if you would give all. Do you remember?”

“I r-remember.”

“Don’t make me beg, Michi. Give me that much.”

“Oh, gods…”

A breathless hush fell over the room, a stillness, broken only by the hiss and click of accursed machines. The machines that damned Aisha to this half-life, bid her languish in the gloom, violated by monstrosities. Michi clenched her teeth, forced herself to suck in one shuddering lungful, tasting smoke and blood, metal and grease, the bile of hatred.

Tears spilled from Aisha’s eyes. “I am so afraid…”

Michi cupped her cheek in one bloody palm, fingers trembling.

“It will be all right, Aisha.”

The woman closed her eyes, reached down and found a calm, long and quiet and deep. Just the slow rise and fall of her chest, the deep void behind her eyes, dark as the womb where first she slumbered. She opened her eyes, and Michi saw strength there, the old strength that had defied a nation.

“Tell me good-bye, Michi-chan.”

Michi leaned down and kissed her eyes, one after the other, salt on her lips. Aisha kept them closed, even after the kisses had ended, her face as serene as if she were sleeping.

“Good-bye, my Lady,” Michi said.

The hair needle sliced through Aisha’s skin, the unfeeling flesh above her pale, blue-scrawled wrists. Once. Twice. A dozen times. No beauty to it. No art. But no pain either.

Blood welled and flowed, sluggish and thick, bright upon the gleaming gold in Michi’s hand. The machines beside the bed shuddered, groaning as if unwilling to let her go. Aisha’s eyes remained closed, a soft slippage from torture into peaceful slumber. Not the gentle deliverance of a woman passing in her bed, surrounded by loved ones after a life well-lived. Not a savior’s death. Not a hero’s.

But at least it was quiet.

Quiet and dark.

Michi forced herself to watch, eyes locked on Aisha’s face. And after an age, an eon, an eternity filled with the shudder and moans of those awful machines, there was a soft exhalation. Gentle as a mother’s hands. And at last, in the end, there came stillness.

And tears.

The snare was set, bait moving, quarry drawing close.

Akihito crouched behind a pile of packing crates, a clay bottle full of chi in one hand, tetsubo in the other. At the sound of approaching boots, he nodded to the other Kagé across the alley. Little Butcher dashed around the corner, a kaleidoscope of profanity spewing from her lips, half a dozen bushimen thundering behind her. A hissing, lumbering Iron Samurai followed, spewing chi from his power unit, ō-yoroi painted the white of old bones. Six Kagé dropped from their perches above, nagamaki spears pinning the bushimen to the floor. Akihito rose from his niche and hurled the chi bottle at the Samurai’s chest.

Terror of the battlefield those ō-yoroi suits might be, but in the cramped confines of Kigen’s labyrinth, the loss of peripheral vision under those bone-white helms was all the advantage the Shadows needed. The Iron Samurai stepped back, bringing his chainswords up to guard as a Kagé appeared from cover and tossed his hand flare.

The man screamed as he ignited, beating at the flames unfurling across his golden tabard, seething up under his faceplate and blistering the skin beneath. Akihito swung his tetsubo in a double-handed grip, nearly knocking the samurai’s head off his shoulders. The soldier toppled backward, blood spraying between his helm’s iron tusks.

Akihito leaned down with a wince, snatched up the fallen samurai’s chainkatana as the Kagé gathered around. Two more of their number had fallen in the fight, neither one of them much more than boys. The guards were moving in bigger patrols, fighting harder—any advantage they had in surprise was fading fast. Akihito knew it wouldn’t be long before they met Iron Samurai sweeping the streets in orderly phalanxes, and any edge the Kagé ambush tactics gave would be lost. Hopefully, they’d bought Daichi enough time.

“All right.” Akihito looked at the sky. “Time to fall back. Everyone split up and make your way to the arena. Our ride will pick us up there. Go.”

The Kagé moved out, pausing at the alley mouth before slipping into the streets and scattering like dry leaves. Akihito was getting ready to move when a smoke-gray shape dropped from an awning overhead, peering at him with piss-yellow eyes.

“Mreowwwwl,” it said.

Akihito looked on in astonishment as the ugliest tomcat in Kigen city brushed up against his legs, purring like a tiny earthquake.

“Daken?”

Seimi raised the blowtorch in front of Yoshi’s face, turned the fuel nozzle and sparked the flint, a burst of smoking heat flaring before their eyes. The boy was trying his best to hold his nerve, but Seimi could see it in the clenched jaw, the pupils dilated to pits, the way each breath made his whole body shake.

It was beautiful.

Seimi leaned close. “I’m the one who did your boyfriend, you know.”

Yoshi lashed out with his forehead, but Seimi flinched back, sidestepping the spit sprayed in his direction.

“He lasted a loooong time, considering.” Seimi grinned like the cat with the cream. “Must have really cared about you to stand tall that distance. The heart weeps.”

The few Scorpion Children who’d stayed to enjoy the show chuckled in the dark around him. Seimi was a master of the snip and clip; he’d once made an informer last six days in the shackles. Not out of any need, understand—the man had begun singing after thirty minutes. No, Seimi had done it just to see if he could.

He leaned close again, inhaling the fear, savoring it on teeth and tongue. And then he sat cross-legged at the boy’s feet and lifted the blowtorch like an orchestra conductor before the music swelled.

“They’re going to tell stories about you, boy. Stories to frighten their children.”

Seimi heard scuffling at his back. One of the brothers shouting a warning. And then there was only blinding pain, a knife of burning ice thrust into his neck. He turned with a cry and she stabbed him again, long-nosed pliers ripping his carotid wide, painting the air bright red.