The Lotus War - Kinslayer Part 55

The Gentleman dropped the pliers as if disgusted by them. They hit concrete with a dull, metallic clang. He drew a kerchief from his uwagi, cleaned the blood off his hands as he spoke with a slow and measured voice to Seimi.

"Release the girl when you are done. But this one?" The Gentleman looked Yos.h.i.+ up and down. "I wish his suffering to be legendary. I wish Kigen to know, now and forever, the price of crossing the Scorpion Children. If you are an artiste, brother, let this boy's flesh be the canvas upon which you paint your masterpiece. And when you are finished, you hang him on a wall in the Market Square for all the world to see. Do you understand me, Seimi-san?"

The man covered his fist and bowed. "Oyabun."

A distant explosion tore the air. Marching boots. Steel and screams.

"If you brothers will excuse me, I have a wife and son to attend."

The Gentleman spared a last glance for Hana, sobbing in a spatter of blood. Lips pursed, hands clasped behind his back. There was a brief flicker, just the tiniest moment of pity in his bottomless stare. But he blinked, and it was gone; the light of a single candle extinguished in a bottomless ocean of black. Motioning to the Scorpion Children on the spotlight's edge, he strolled from the room, taking eight yakuza with him. Yos.h.i.+ heard heavy doors open and close, the chaos from the streets outside swelling momentarily, smoke-scent growing stronger still.

Seimi was watching him with narrowed eyes.

"You've got b.a.l.l.s, street trash, I'll give you that."

The yakuza walked to the table, picked up the chi-powered blowtorch, smiling faintly.

"But not for long."

Yos.h.i.+ drew a breath.

Held it for forever.

And there on the floor, amidst the anguish and the blood and the agony in the place where her eye had once been, Hana lay curled in a tiny ball and sobbed.

And shook.

And remembered.

The bottle fell, a long, scything arc ending in her throat and a spray of blood, thick and hot and bright. And Hana did what any thirteen-year-old girl would have done at that moment.

Yos.h.i.+ crashed into their father, shapeless bellowing and flailing fists. He caught him on the cheek, the jaw, the pair falling on the table and smas.h.i.+ng it to splinters. Hana stood and screamed over her mother's body, head throbbing like it might burst, looking at that open, grinning throat and those beautiful blue eyes, empty now and forever.

Her father slapped Yos.h.i.+ aside, his face purple, sweat and veins and spittle and teeth.

"Little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I'll kill you," he growled.

Da raised the broken sake bottle in his good hand, leaned over Yos.h.i.+'s crumpled form. Blood on the gla.s.s. Blood on his hands. Her mother's. Now her brother's too? Too little to stop him. Too small to make a difference. But in that moment, Hana found herself roaring anyway, thoughtless, heedless, throwing herself at his back, beating on him with her tiny fists, screaming, "No, no, no," as if all the storms in all the world lived inside her lungs. He spun around with horror etched on his face, as if he couldn't believe she would turn on him. Not his Hana. Not his little flower.

"My G.o.ds," he said. "Your eye..."

He pointed to her face with the blood-slicked bottle, features twisted in anguish.

"G.o.ds above, no. No, not you..."

Yos.h.i.+ leaped on Da's back with a roar, wrapping his arms around his throat. Father swung his elbow, connected with Yos.h.i.+'s jaw. Teeth clapping together. Blood. Her brother fell amongst the table fragments, limp and senseless.

Da turned and slapped her, spun her like a top. She fell to her knees and he was on her, sitting on her chest and pinning her arms with his thighs. He was so heavy. So heavy she couldn't breathe. Sobbing. Pleading.

"No, Da. Don't!"

He pressed his stunted forearm to her throat, broken bottle still clutched in his hand.

"I should've known," he hissed. "I should've known it was in you. She's poisoned you."

He pointed at their mother, irises glazed over like beach gla.s.s, the color of dragon silk.

"It's in you," her father was saying. "You gaijin trash. The white devils are in you. But I can see them. I can get them out..."

He held the bottle to her face, inches from Hana's right eye, broken gla.s.s reflected in her iris.

"Da, no!" She shook her head, eyes closed tight. "No, no!"

Then he dug the bottle in.

"I can get them out..."

50.

SENSATION.

The world around her was so bright, so sharp, Ayane thought her eyes might bleed.

Faint breeze tickled her ankles and s.h.i.+ns, clothing rasped against bare flesh, raising the new hair on her body in gooseb.u.mps. When Kin turned to look at her, she could feel his breath on her face, feather-soft. She s.h.i.+vered at the overload of sensation, all this feeling, so fresh and new. But more than that, as she watched the old man by the window, shaking and coughing and slipping toward his grave one breath at a time, she was surprised to feel pity swelling inside her chest. Pity for him, standing so close to the edge, blissfully unaware of what yawned beneath his toes. And pity for herself, that all this would end almost as soon as it began.

The mechabacus chattered on her chest. In her head. Orders. Movements. Questions.

Questions she longed to answer.

Kin was looking at her, a pointed stare, smooth and hard. And so she stood and asked for directions to the privy, bowing low to Daichi before stepping on quiet feet to the stairwell.

Three floors down into the Kage bas.e.m.e.nt, the battle plan spread on the table, chess pieces and charcoal sticks and rice-paper. Ayane knelt in the corner, face upturned to the ceiling. She ran one finger along her arm, delighting in the sensation, watching the tiny hairs stir and rise. The finger trailed up her shoulder, over the empty output jack at her collarbone, down her breast. And there she found it. Smooth metal and cold transistors. Chittering weight hanging on the cord around her neck. She touched a length of corrugated rubber cable spilling from the mechabacus's side, held it up to the light, staring at the bayonet studs at its head.

She closed her eyes and felt night air on her skin. Inhaling smoke and ash, listening to the swelling orchestra of the chaos outside. Holding her breath, as if she were about to dive into deep water. And then she plunged the cable into the output port at her collarbone, twisting it home with a sharp snap, exhalation drifting into a sigh.

Her fingers moved across the device's face, s.h.i.+fting counting beads back and forth in a tiny, intricate dance. She felt the chatter swell, s.h.i.+ft focus to the new transmission, the signal that had been missing from the choir these past weeks. Their voices in her head, the nattering, clattering tumbling voices, sounds of the real world drifting away. And as the sensation of her flesh became nothing at all, tears slipped over fluttering lashes and down her cheeks, falling away from flesh almost too insensate to mark their pa.s.sing.

Almost.

They crawled through the sewer, no louder than the rats around them, sleek, flea-bitten shapes baring crooked yellow fangs at their approach. Kaori in front, sweat soaking through her kerchief, a hand-cranked tungsten torch burning in her hand. The rest of the Kage behind, single file, breathing heavy in the dank confines of the tunnel's gut.

They were half a dozen turns into the labyrinth when Kaori paused at a four-way junction, looked back the way they'd come. The Spider peered at her in the dark, eyes narrowed against the stink.

"Do you know where you're going?" The lieutenant's whisper was feather-light, almost inaudible behind the grubby cotton covering his mouth.

Kaori scowled, turned around, kept crawling.

They reached a four-way junction and Kaori paused again, looking left and right, chewing her lip. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated.

"This makes no sense," she whispered.

The Spider cursed beneath his breath, spat into the filth they crawled through.

"Raijin's drums, what's the problem?"

"We're looking for an emergency access shaft, up into the maintenance subbas.e.m.e.nt. But we should have hit a T-junction, not a crossroads."

The Spider took Kin's map from Kaori's hand, smeared with filth but still legible. The Kage lieutenant frowned in the stuttering light, looking back the way they'd come, even turning the paper upside down.

"This is wrong," he said. "We pa.s.sed a five-way fork after the crossroads. But we shouldn't have hit that until after the T-junction."

"That's what I just said," Kaori hissed.

"Your Guildsman can't even draw a G.o.dsd.a.m.ned map." The paper crumpled in one sodden fist. "Anyone would think the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d wanted us lost down here."

Kaori looked at the Spider, he at her, watching her eyes grow wide.

"Oh G.o.ds..."

"What are you doing?"

The voice pulled Ayane from her trance, mechabacus fading to a whisper as she opened bloodshot eyes and saw Isao in the doorway. The boy's face was flushed, fist curled around the haft of a wickedly sharp kusarigama, muscles taut along his forearm. He advanced toward her.

"You're only supposed to be receiving, not transmitting. What are you doing?"

Ayane was on her feet, razored arms at her back unfolding with a bright, silver sound. The boy paused, one hand creeping up to his cheek; the thin red scar she'd given him on the bridge. Eyes on her fingers, still dancing on her mechabacus. He drew breath to shout for help.

A hand snaked over his mouth from behind and his eyes grew wide, a m.u.f.fled, choking cry spilling through the fingers covering his lips. A knife gleamed red in the gloom.

"What's my name, Isao?" Kin whispered.

Is...o...b..cked, clawing blindly at Kin's face. Kin stabbed again, red floods pouring down Isao's back as he crumpled to his knees and toppled forward onto dusty concrete. Kin fell upon him, plunging the knife down again and again, scarlet spraying across the walls. Chest heaving, sucking breath through clenched teeth, finally pus.h.i.+ng himself away from the corpse and spraying it with a mouthful of spittle, hands painted red, face white as snow.

Ayane watched him as if hypnotized. The silver at her back gleamed, long, razored needles rippling like branches in a gentle breeze. She walked up beside him and peered at Isao's body, the blood pooling around him.

"You stabbed him in the back," she said.

"So?"

Ayane reached out with one spider limb to poke the meat cooling on the bas.e.m.e.nt floor. Kin grabbed her arm, glaring.

"I'm just touching..." she said.

"Well, don't."

"What was it like?" Head tilted, eyes a little too wide. "To kill him? How did it feel?"

"This isn't the G.o.dsd.a.m.ned time, Ayane."

"Where are the others? Takes.h.i.+ and Atsus.h.i.+?"

"Already gone." He gestured to the mechabacus on her chest. "Is it done?"

"Hai." Ayane reached out ever so slowly, touched the blood on Kin's cheek. "It is done."

Kin sheathed his knife, walked up the stairs. "Then let's get this over with."

Ayane lingered, watching the punctured carrion cooling on the ground in front of her. She looked at the droplets of blood, winding in random paths down the walls, smeared on her fingertips. Her tongue emerged from between bee-stung lips and she touched it to her fingers, just once, s.h.i.+vering as she tasted copper and salt.

Licking her lips, she turned and followed Kin up the stairs.

He hadn't moved from the window.

A silhouette against rising flames, sky-s.h.i.+ps roaring overhead, the calls for calm, obedience, dispersal, hanging in the air with the smoke. He didn't even look at them as they entered the room; Kin standing in the doorway, smeared in blood, Ayane leaning into a corner, a halo of silver needles fanned out along the walls.

"I wonder how history will remember us, Kin-san," Daichi said, voice frail with pain. "I wonder what they will say."

Kin's reply was flat. Dead.

"They'll probably call me traitor."

Daichi nodded at the flames. "Probably."

"They won't call you anything at all."

Daichi raised an eyebrow, turned toward the boy, and froze. He took in the unblinking eyes, the blood smeared across fingers and face, the dead-man expression.

"n.o.body will remember your name, Daichi," Kin said.

"What..." Daichi licked his lips, eyes fixed on those b.l.o.o.d.y hands, "... what have you done, Kin-san?"

"I told you," Kin said. "I found a way for all of it to end."

The window exploded at Daichi's back, a rain of shattered gla.s.s and roar of blue-white flame. A Lotusman collided with the old man, knocked him off his feet, the pair cras.h.i.+ng to the floor and tumbling across the boards. Another half-dozen suited shapes blasted in through the broken window, the roar of their burners almost deafening, filling the room with choking smoke.