The Lotus War - Kinslayer Part 14

Sparrows sang to each other in the gloom, calling their good nights as the dark crept closer on velvet-quiet feet.

"Where's Buruu?" he asked.

"Fis.h.i.+ng." She gifted him with a small smile. "Gorging himself before we leave. He eats like a lotusfiend on a comedown. I hope we can get off the ground."

"Before you leave? Where are you going?"

"North. Shabis.h.i.+ Island."

"Can I ... come with you?"

She sighed, ran her knuckles across her brow. "I don't think so. Your thoughts are like a tangle of thorns inside my head." She held up the bottle, sake slos.h.i.+ng inside. "This is all that's keeping them quiet."

"My ... thoughts?"

"Not just you." She waved the bottle across the village. "Everyone. All of you. I can't shut you out. So I'm just not sure it's a wonderful idea for me to be around people right now."

"That's..." He floundered for the words, shaking his head. "That's just..."

"Unbelievable?" she sighed. "Terrifying?"

"What's causing it?"

"That's what I'm hoping to find out in Shabis.h.i.+. I have to control this power, Kin. I have to master it before it masters me. If I don't, I'm a danger to everyone around me." She touched his hand. "Including you."

"Am I hurting you now? I mean ... do you want me to go?"

"No." Her finger trailed across his skin, gooseb.u.mps rising. "Not yet..."

Silence fell then. Crus.h.i.+ng and empty. All the things he thought he should say sounded hollow in his head. The memory of her lips stirred in his blood, the thought of her body pressed against him echoed in his veins. It felt like she was running away from him. It felt like ...

"Well, at least I'll have something to do when you're gone," he shrugged.

She offered a teasing smile. "Miss me terribly?"

"I mean aside from that." He gave her hand a shy squeeze. "I'm thinking about planting some blood lotus."

"Lotus?" She blinked. "What for?"

"Experiment with it in a controlled environment. Maybe I can figure out a way to stop it killing the soil it grows in."

"Why would you want to do that?"

"To save what's left of s.h.i.+ma, of course." He could feel the warmth radiating from her skin. "Aside from the Iis.h.i.+, everything is lotus fields or poisoned deadlands."

"We won't save s.h.i.+ma by planting more lotus, Kin."

"Then how will we save it?"

She looked at him strangely then, and her voice was that of a parent talking to an infant.

"We incinerate the fields. So there's nothing left but ashes."

"You want to light the whole island on fire?"

"The lotus must burn, Kin. The Guild along with it."

"But what about afterward? When all this is done?"

"Don't you think you're putting the rickshaw before the runner? Instead of worrying about what we do after the war is over, maybe you should think of ways to help us win it?"

He watched her, silent and still. She stared out into the dark, took another pull from the sake bottle. Pale skin, shadows smudged under her eyes. She looked sick, as if she hadn't eaten or slept properly in days. Oily fingers of anxiety wormed their way into his guts.

"Well, I was thinking about that too," he said. "I thought we could salvage the ruins of those ironclads. There's bound to be all kinds of sc.r.a.p to make the village more defensible. Shuriken-throwers. Armor plating. There are pit traps on the western rise, of course, but everyone around here keeps talking about how there are more oni moving through the lower woods. Old Mari told me they usually get restless after an earthquake, and the one this morning was the worst anyone around here can remember. If they came down in force..."

She sighed, glanced at him in the deepening dark. "They're not going to let you build anything that runs on chi, Kin."

"No, we can do it without combustion. I can set up the 'thrower feeders so they're hand-cranked. They'll be slower to fire, but it's gas pressure that does most of the work." Excitement in his gut, voice running quicker at the thought of building, of creating something again. "I can see it in my head. I was talking about it with Ayane and-"

"Ayane?" Yukiko frowned. "When did you talk to her?"

He blinked, confused. "This afternoon. In the prison."

"Kin, you shouldn't do that. The Kage don't trust it ... I mean 'her.' If you spend time with her, they're not going to trust you either."

"You heard Atsus.h.i.+ and Isao at the pit trap this morning." He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. "None of them trust me anyway."

"All the more reason to stay away from her."

"She came all this way to find us. Do you realize what she's given up to be here?"

"I don't care what-"

"She's alone, Yukiko. For the first time since her Awakening, she's unplugged from the mechabacus. She can't hear the voice of the Guild anymore, can't feel them inside her head. Imagine spending years by the hearth of an Upside bedhouse. Everything is light and voices and song. And then one day you get thrown into the dark. You've never even seen night before. Never felt cold. But now it's everywhere. That's what she's feeling right now, locked in that cell. That's what she chose when she decided to come here."

"We don't know she chose anything. They could have sent her here, Kin-"

"Did you know every female born in the Guild becomes a False-Lifer?" He felt anger creeping into his voice, turning it hard and ugly and cold. "They don't get a say in what they want to be. Don't get to decide who they're paired with, or when it's time to breed. They don't even get to meet the father of their children. Just another False-Lifer with an inseminator tube and a bottle of lubricant."

"G.o.ds, Kin-"

"So don't s.h.i.+t on the choices she's made, Yukiko." He s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand from hers. "It's the first thing she's decided for herself in her entire life. Not everyone gets a thunder tiger to help them out of their mistakes, you know. Some people risk everything they have alone."

"Kin, I'm sorry..."

He climbed to his feet, and she lurched up after him, knocking the sake bottle onto its side. Rose-colored liquid spilled from the neck, soaking the boards at their feet. Kin turned to leave but she grabbed his hand again, pulled him around to face her.

"Don't leave like this. Please."

She was standing just inches away, fingers entwined in his own, lips parted ever so slightly. The world swayed beneath his feet, heart pounding against his ribs like a steamhammer. He was conscious of nothing in the world except her. The scent of her hair entwined in liquor perfume. Her skin radiating the warmth of a kiln, melting his insides. His mouth was suddenly dry, palms soaked. And though he tried, he felt as though he would never catch his breath again.

"Don't be angry with me, Kin." She inched closer. "I don't want to fight with you."

"What do you want from me, Yukiko?"

"It might be weeks before we see each other again." Her eyes searched his face, lingered on his lips. "But we have an hour or so until Buruu comes back..."

She pressed against him, hands parting the cloth on his chest, trailing along his skin, white hot. He glanced at the spilled liquor around their feet, the tide of blood staining her cheeks and lips the color of roses.

"Kiss me," she breathed.

She stood on tiptoes, arms slipping around his neck, mouth drifting toward his.

"Kiss me..."

She was like gravity, pulling him closer, heavy as the earth beneath him. No noise. No light. Only motion, only the pull of her, down, down to a place he wanted so badly he could taste it, feel it singing inside his chest. A place he would kill for. A place he could happily die inside.

But not like this.

Not like this.

"No." He took hold of her shoulders, eased her away. "No."

"Kin-"

"This isn't you, Yukiko."

"Not me?" she frowned. "Who am I then?"

"I'm not sure I know." He gestured to the sake bottle on the floor. "Perhaps you find out when you get to the bottom?"

She remained herself for just a tiny moment longer, plain behind her eyes, wounded and sad and desperately alone. The girl he loved. The girl he would do anything for. And then she was gone. Wiped away in a rush of heat, pupils flas.h.i.+ng, leaving the rage behind. The stranger who lived inside her skin. What had Ayane called her?

"The girl all Guildsmen fear."

"You don't get to judge me, Kin."

"G.o.dsdammit, I'm not judging you. I care about you! And I see you turning into this ... thing, this Stormdancer, and piece by piece I see the Yukiko I know falling away." He sighed, dragging a hand across his scalp. "I mean ... you killed those Guildsmen, Yukiko. Three ironclads full. Over a hundred people. And you killed them."

"I let one of them live." Her stare was cold. Defiant. "But maybe I should have let them firebomb the forest? Maybe I should have let them kill you?"

"Since when were you a ma.s.s murderer?"

"Don't you dare." A low growl, eyes wide. "You stood by while thousands died-"

The words were a slap to his face, rocking him back on his heels. The memory of pale-skinned women and children, row upon row of gaijin shuffling meekly to meet their boiling end. Rendered down into fertilizer, reborn in some far-flung field as beautiful, blood-red flowers. He knew it was true. Everything she said. But to hear her say it ...

He blinked at her. Speechless. Senseless.

"I shouldn't have said that," she sighed. "I'm sorry."

Yukiko breathed deep, clawed away her hair. He could see it written on her face. Boiling inside her. Curling her fingers into fists, her lips to a grimace. When she spoke again, her voice was soft with it, trembling at the outskirts.

"I know it wasn't your fault, Kin. The gaijin. Inochi. All of it. I know there was nothing you could do to stop it. Kaori and the others say otherwise. They say there's no steel in you, but I know helping me in Kigen took more courage than most could ever dream.

"But this is war, Kin. The Yukiko you knew? That frightened little girl in the Shgun's palace? She's gone." Fire in her eyes. "She's dead."

"No steel in me..." he whispered, lips twisting in a bitter smile.

"It's bulls.h.i.+t, Kin." She took his hand, entwined her fingers with his own. "Don't you believe it. Any of it. But know you have enemies here. People who see you as Guild first and everything else second. Stay close to Daichi while I'm gone. And stay as far from Ayane as you can. Don't give them a reason to doubt you."

"Why would I bother?" he spat. "They're doing perfectly well without one..."

"Kin-"

"I hope you find the answers you seek." He pulled his hand away, let it drop to his side. "I know Buruu will keep you safe."

Hurt in her eyes as she chewed her lip, searched the dark for the right words to say.

"Kiss me good-bye?"

Hovering uncertain. Wanting it more than he could say. Pride and anger shus.h.i.+ng want, leaving it alone and friendless. All he'd given, all he'd sacrificed, and this was the life he'd purchased. Watching her fly away. Leaving him, just like she'd left him in Kigen. Alone.

Again.

He put his hands to her cheeks, feeling the satin warmth of her skin, the sensation of it beneath his tingling fingertips almost crus.h.i.+ng his resolve to powder. But in the end, tilting her head up to his, her lips parting ever so softly, he leaned down and kissed her gently on the brow.

"Good-bye, Stormdancer," he said.

And then he turned and walked away.

Part of him screamed he was an idiot. That he would regret it. But anger and pride urged him on, the burning fuel of the indignant fool, and he stalked off into the dark with the waterfall of his blood thras.h.i.+ng in his ears. She called his name again, just once. But he didn't stop. Didn't turn his head. And somewhere deep in the back of his mind, a tiny thought found its voice for the first time; a whisper almost too faint to hear.

It kept him awake most of the night, belly-up on his mattress of straw, staring at the ceiling with sandbag eyes. Breathing. Listening. The limbo of insomnia, gray and bottomless as the hours dragged on forever, leaving him in the muddy dawn with a heart exhausted and seven words lodged in his mind like a handful of splinters.

The same question.

Over and over again.

What the h.e.l.ls are you doing here?

10.