Jay Kristoff - Kinslayer

“Life’s bad all over.” He wiped her tears away with gentle hands. “But the sun’s gonna shine and the shadows’ll fall, with or without us. Just the way it rides. We need to look out for ourselves. Nobody else is going to. Let the clans fight their wars. Let the Kagé and the Guild scrap in the streets. It’s none of our business, Hana.”

She said nothing for the longest time, just concentrated on holding back the tears until the urge to shed them died. She reached beneath her tunic, took hold of the little golden amulet hanging around her neck, running her thumb over the stag embossed on its surface. A gift from a mother long gone, a memento of a life long over. And then she ran her nose along her sleeve, sighing as she looked him up and down.

“Your roots are showing.” She nodded to his hair. “You need to dye it again.”

“I know. I asked Jurou to get some ink.”

She stared into space, five years gone. Saw the glint of candlelight on broken glass. Felt warm and red spattered on her face.

“I can get them out…”

“You know when you drink like this … when you yell like this…” Hana felt her voice go soft and fragile. “You remind me of Da.”

Yoshi tensed, eyes roaming the ceiling as he breathed deep.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t say that. I take care of you. I’ll never leave you. Never hurt you. No matter what. Blood is blood.”

“That’s what scares me, brother-mine.”

She hung her head, stared at nothing at all.

“That’s what scares me.”

“Don’t let in the flies.”

Miho’s growl rose above the chimes over the door. Slamming it behind him, her new customer stepped inside amidst the tinkle of hollow brass. She didn’t look up from her newssheet, flicked a stray lock of hair from her eyes.

She was close to thirty, pretty in a hard, Docktown kind of way. Her sleeveless uwagi was open at the throat, showing the scrolling tapestry of phoenixes burning above her breasts and down each bicep. Her forearms were painted with old myths: Enma-ō on his bone mountain wrapped around her left, the Stormdancer Tora Takehiko and his thunder tiger charging into the Devil Gate on her right.

The shelves of her little general store were almost bare, rationing and the sky-ship lockdown having cleared out most of her stock. Bags of rice, cheap liquor, a few odds and ends, the prices punching holes clean through the roof. If not for her friends in the black market, she’d have shut down weeks ago. Foot traffic scuttled past outside, blurred shadows beyond glass-brick windows: Kigen residents hurrying to finish their errands in a city poised on the brink.

Her customer returned to the counter, dropped an armful of items, cleared his throat. Miho continued scanning the newssheet. The headline sang about Daimyo Hiro and Lady Aisha’s wedding, only a day away. The ink was fresh, sticky on her fingertips. A distant crier rang ten bells for the Hour of the Crane.

“I’d like to buy these, please.” Young voice, lotus rasp.

Miho glanced up. Brown rice. Red saké. Black ink.

“You can’t afford those, boy.” She turned a page, wiped her brow with her forearm. A sheen of sweat made the thunder tiger and its rider gleam.

“You haven’t even looked at me.”

“I can smell you. Anyone who smokes as much as you do can’t afford those.”

A fistful of kouka rained down upon the old oak countertop, a clattering, metallic tumble, knocking tiny dents into the varnish. She glanced up briefly at the coins. Each one was a full plait of iron-gray, stamped with the date of its minting. The bottom edge of each braid was sawtooth rough, gleaming like it was fresh clipped from the mold. It was as if someone had taken to the end of each coin with an iron file, rasping away a thin sliver of tarnished skin to expose the new metal beneath.

“Certainly, young master.” Miho straightened with a smile. “That much coin will even warrant some change.”

She reached beneath the counter, into her strongbox. And as she handed over a half-dozen coppers, she brought up her other fist, fast as blinking, brass knuckles gleaming, smashing them hard across the boy’s jaw and dropping him like a brick to the floor.

Miho stepped around the counter, locked the front door and flipped over the CLOSED sign. She looked the unconscious boy over with a critical eye. He was just a teenager by his look. Nice cheekbones. Expensive tiger ink on his upper arm. Dark bangs hanging around darker eyes, sweet as sugar-rock, a dusting of whiskers on his cheeks and upper lip, now split and bleeding.

He was pretty, and that was a real shame.

Seimi-san liked to hurt the pretty ones.

Consciousness was hard-won, harder still to hold, swimming up to the light of waking and struggling to tread water, body and head one throbbing knot of pain.

Yukiko blinked up into roiling black and found Piotr looking down at her, just a silhouette, lightning snared in the white of his blind eye. He crouched beside her on the cold glass, smoothed the hair from her face and murmured in his own tongue. Her hands and brow had been rebandaged, a bundled satchel placed behind her head, Piotr’s big wolf skin draped over her to shield her from the storm. She had no idea how long she’d been out for.

“Care,” he said. “Head.”

Yukiko sat up slowly, clutching her gut. Every part of her ached, the rain fell like iron-thrower shot against her skin. She couldn’t remember hurting so badly in all her life.

“Thank…”

Her throat seized closed on the words. Wincing, breathing deep, she tried speaking again.

“Thank you for helping us, Piotr.”

“Tell you.” He nodded proudly. “Promise.”

Yukiko crawled across the blood-slick rock and leaned against Buruu, running her fingers through the feathers at the base of his skull. He stirred, eyelids flickering, the pupils beyond so dilated that his irises almost drowned in the black.

She turned back to Piotr slowly, lest her head fall completely off her shoulders. The Thunder God pounded his drums, the tremor beginning in her temples and rumbling all the way down her spine.

“Promised who?”

“Prisoner,” he said.

She blinked away the rain, frowning. “The ones who kept you prisoner? Kitsune? Samurai?”

“No, no.” The man sighed, exasperated. “Not me for the prisoner. Us keeping for the prisoner. There.” He pointed toward the lightning farm, his good eye lighting up as he remembered a word. “Guild!” He snapped his fingers. “Guild!”

“A Guildsman?” Yukiko recalled the ruined Guild ships on the rocks at the edge of the Razor Isles, the beaten brass on Katya’s armor. “A Guildsman who crashed here?”

“Da, da,” Piotr nodded. “Fix me. Fix leg. Walk me.” He pointed at the mechanical brace on his leg, the blind eye in its ravaged socket. “He prisoner for us. My accident is falling. Leg crush. Face, da? He fix me. Saving for the life. Teach for me the Shiman. Piotr friend too, da? Is friend.” A sigh. “I make for the promise if Zryachniye take him.”

“A promise?”

The gaijin pulled a worn leather wallet from his coat, hunched over to shield it from the rain, unfolded a scrap of paper inside.

“Taking back.” Piotr touched his chest, touched the paper. “Taking back for the Shima. He for the saving my life. Good man. Was good.”

The paper was worn, slightly mildewed, covered in fine black kanji. It was a letter, she realized. A letter from Piotr’s Guildsman. Yukiko scanned the text, struggling to focus, a lead-gray sorrow welling in her chest.