The Lotus War - Kinslayer Part 43

*HOW YOU TALK IN MY MIND?*

"I am Ykai-kin."

The nomad blinked, looked at her with narrowed, amber eyes. The intensity of his thoughts was making her head ache, even behind her mental barricade. She realized her nose was bleeding again.

"You're a wanderer? You have no pack?"

*WILL MAKE MY OWN.*

Yukiko glanced up at the female she could still feel wheeling about their heads.

"She doesn't seem interested, friend."

*FEMALE STRONG. NEEDS STRONGER MATE. ONE WHO HAS WON GLORY. SUCH IS OUR WAY.*

"I have a better way."

*BETTER?*

"A way to win glory untold."

* ... HOW?*

"Join our pack."

The nomad looked at Buruu, made a snorting sound that sounded like laughter.

*SKRAAI JOIN KINSLAYER? NEVER.*

Yukiko blinked the rain from her eyes, frowning.

"Why do you call him that?"

*WHAT HE IS.*

"But you call yourself Skraai?"

*MY NAME.*

"Before I met him, Buruu didn't have a name. I didn't think..."

Buruu stepped forward, eyes downcast.

YUKIKO ...

The nomad tossed his head, snorting again.

*KINSLAYER HAD NAME. THEY TAKE FROM HIM, MONKEY-CHILD.*

The sound of retching drew Yukiko's attention away. Ilyitch was curled on wet stone, hair tangled about his face, coughing up seawater. Her concern swelled, the conversation with Skraai momentarily forgotten. She walked to her fallen satchel, hauled out two deep tuna, each as long as her leg. Sliding one across the ground to Buruu, she tossed the other to the nomad with a grunt.

"You two think you can enjoy a meal without tearing each other to pieces?"

The aras.h.i.+tora regarded each other with wary stares. Yukiko knelt beside the gaijin, smoothed the hair from his face. The tempest had lessened, wind slowing to a gale, rain falling in sheets rather than blankets. Ilyitch looked up at her and gave a weak smile, leaned back against broken rock and pulled his wolf skin tight about himself. Running one hand over the pelt, fingers in sodden fur, he murmured beneath his breath. Eyes closed. Head bowed. He seemed to be giving thanks. Yukiko wondered what G.o.ds he prayed to.

After a sentence or two, Ilyitch pulled a tin box from inside his coveralls, produced one of his smoke sticks and put it to his lips with trembling hands. Realizing it was soaked with seawater, he spit it out again in disgust.

Yukiko stood and walked over to Buruu, running her fingertips along the misshapen lines of his clockwork wings. Some of the canvas quills had been ripped loose in the struggle with Skraai and the harness was badly torn, but the skeleton seemed reasonably intact. Bent and crumpled, certainly; it'd be impossible to fly with them in their current state. But with the right tools, she might be able to beat them back into shape.

Problem was, they hadn't brought any tools with them.

She turned back to Ilyitch, still slumped on the stone, catching his breath. She pushed a picture into his mind; the shape of tools, of hands working on the mechanical wings. The boy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, gave a weary nod.

"So how do we get the tools out here?" Yukiko pointed to the cable network again, made a pedaling motion with her hands. "We have to go back and get them."

The thought made her entire body ache.

The gaijin held up a finger as if to say "watch and learn." He reached into his own satchel, produced a bundle wrapped in brown oilskin. Unfolding a few layers, he revealed a cylinder of black metal, perhaps a foot long. Yukiko helped him to his feet, and he smiled and muttered what she presumed was thanks. Walking to the island's edge with the oilskin beneath his arm, he twisted the cylinder, held it above his head, pointed to the clouds. A puff of smoke spat from the haft, the tube hissing. Magnesium-bright light flared, and an object shot into the sky, fifty feet into the tempest. A tiny second sun, hissing and popping in the rain, trailing a long cloud of pale gray smoke. Buruu and Skraai looked up from their meals, watched the white fire glowing above. Buruu growled. Yukiko stepped forward, confused and frowning.

"What are you doing?" She raised her voice, as if it would help him understand her better. "Ilyitch? Won't they see that from the farm?"

The gaijin turned to her with a smile. Reaching into his oilskin he drew out a tube of coiled bra.s.s and delicate gla.s.s globes. He raised it toward Buruu.

"Oh G.o.ds, n-"

A crackling arc of white light burst from the tube, reaching across the s.p.a.ce between Ilyitch and Buruu and filling it with thunder. The aras.h.i.+tora reared back and took the bolt to his chest, knocking the breath from his lungs and sending him cras.h.i.+ng into the rocks behind. Yukiko screamed and lunged toward the weapon, and a backhand from Ilyitch landed on her jaw, sent her tumbling. Skraai roared, spread his wings and charged headlong into another burst of deafening white light. It hit him like a wrecking ball, rolling his eyes back in his skull as he collapsed, skidding to a halt three feet from the gaijin's toes, steam rising from his fur.

Yukiko blinked black light from her eyes, reaching toward Ilyitch's mind with the intention of crus.h.i.+ng it to pulp. He aimed a savage kick at her ribs and the wind left her lungs, accompanied by a spray of spittle and the clap of iron-capped boots on bone. He kicked her again in the back of the head and she curled into a ball, stars bursting and falling behind her eyes.

Ilyitch fished around in his satchel, weapon pointed lazily at the stunned aras.h.i.+tora. Yukiko struggled to roll onto her belly, get her wind back, ignore the broken-gla.s.s pain in her skull. Ilyitch growled a warning, weapon aimed at her face, shaking his head. Thunder rumbled above, lightning crackled across roiling black. The boy produced another flare and fired it shrieking into the sky. Yukiko rested her cheek against the obsidian beneath her, wonderfully cool, slick with rain. It called out to her with a voice as old as the earth.

Sleep.

Sleep now, child.

She clenched her jaw, voice strangled. "Why are you doing this?"

Ilyitch snarled incomprehensible words, waved the bra.s.s tube, finger to his lips.

Ignoring the pain blooming b.l.o.o.d.y across her thoughts, she reached out to Buruu through the Kenning. She could feel his warmth, run through with vertigo; the sparkling numbness of a newly landed fish, cracked across the stern to render it senseless. Skraai was in a similar state, clawing back toward waking from a darkness lined with coils of bra.s.s and tiny gla.s.s globes.

But they were alive.

"G.o.dsd.a.m.n you..." Yukiko clawed sodden hair from her mouth, tried to pull herself up. "I saved your life. Why are you doing this?"

Ilyitch's shout was as good as fingers around her throat, squeezing tight. Yukiko pressed her hands to her bruised ribs, arms wrapped around herself. Moments pa.s.sed-minutes or hours, her concussion fading all to gray. But finally, beneath the storm's howl, she realized she could hear a rhythmic pulse, a dull whumphwhumphwhumph, swelling at her back, drawing ever closer. She didn't even need to turn to see what it was-the flying machine from the lightning farm's roof. The metal dragonfly.

She reached out through her wall and touched the boy's thoughts again, resisting the impulse to squeeze. But what would it cost her to kill him? How much would she spend of herself? How much would be left to fight the gaijin headed toward her in the belly of that metal insect?

He used me. Used me to catch them both. But why?

She watched Ilyitch rummaging in his bag again, stare falling on the pale wolf pelt across his shoulders. Yukiko thought back to the brown bearskin on Danyk's back, the samurai helms bolted on his broad shoulders, the flayed Lotusman skin over Katya's leathers. Every gaijin soldier she'd seen wore the skin of an enemy or an animal.

But nothing so fantastic as an aras.h.i.+tora.

Oh G.o.ds, no ...

The thought turned her stomach, filled her with a fear that dwarfed anything felt in Yoritomo's clutches.

He couldn't ...

The boy found what he was looking for, dragged it from the satchel with his right hand. It gleamed as a flash of lighting lit the sky, at least a foot long, hooked and cruel.

A knife.

"No, you can't..."

She tried to claw her way to her feet, her skull ready to split open, seizing hold of his thoughts and squeezing tight. His eyes widening in pain and flooding bloodshot, Ilyitch stepped up and kicked her in the head, the world falling away as she briefly flew, shoulders cras.h.i.+ng upon broken black gla.s.s. She blinked at the storm above, only dimly aware of the boy grabbing her hands, binding them tight. He punched her in the face again and again, consciousness threatening to flee on dark wings.

Buruu ...

She could hear the gaijin flying machine drawing closer, its engines like the pulse throbbing at her temples, the beating of distant drums.

Whumpwhumpwhump.

She flopped over onto her stomach, vision blurred, watching Ilyitch crouch beside Buruu. The twitching tail was the only sign of life, but she could feel him, struggling toward the surface, the rippling light of a distant sun above. She tried to reach into the Kenning, but her thoughts slipped away between the cracks in her skull, bleeding from her ears.

Buruu, WAKE UP!

Ilyitch scowled as he inspected the metal wings, running his fingers over iridescent metal, ball joints, pistons and false quills. Lifting the canvas covering, he pawed at the blunt, severed feathers that were Yoritomo's legacy, hacked off in Kigen arena ten thousand lifetimes ago. And with a muttered curse, the gaijin boy stood, spat on the ground and stalked over to Skraai.

Boots crunching on shattered obsidian.

Howling wind.

Thunder.

Whumpwhumpwhump.

The nomad was stirring, talons that could rend an ironclad like cloth curling into fists, leaving gouges in the black gla.s.s beneath. Ilyitch ran his fingers through the feathers at the aras.h.i.+tora's neck, over the mighty wings, breathing deep, a slow smile alighting on his face. The quills glowed with a faint l.u.s.ter; the charge of static electricity lighting his eyes with hunger.

He nodded.

Whumpwhumpwhump.

"No," she moaned. "Don't..."

Ilyitch straddled the aras.h.i.+tora's head, one boot on either side, face turned to the sky.

"Imperatritsa, butye svidetilem!" he cried. "Moya dob.i.+.c.ha! Moya slava!"

Whumpwhumpwhump.

The boy raised the knife.

"Ilyitch, don't!"

Lightning in the skies, reflected in the blade.

Descending.

"NO!"

And with a flash of steel, an impossible gush of red, the boy opened up the thunder tiger's throat.

PART 3.

ASHES.

Prayers first for the Judge, Offerings for Enma-, burned in blessed flame.

Coin and holy words, invocations unto him, that he judge them fair.

And from fire's belly, when all heat and light shall fade, a handful of ash, Spread upon cold skin, bloodless faces and dead lips, That we shall know them.

-From the Book of Ten Thousand Days.

37.

OFFERINGS.

He always knocked on her door. As if she had some say whether he entered or not.

Michi plastered on her smile as Ichizo nodded to his retinue of bus.h.i.+men, sealing them outside in the bustling, servant-strewn hallway. She stepped across the room, joy on her face if not in her eyes, pressing her lips to his and wondering how long it would be before the serpent in her arms reared back to strike.

"My love," he said. "I missed you."

"And I you," she lied. "I get so lonely without you."