19.

CATCHING THE SKY.

The pain in her lungs was a living thing; a fire pressing against her ribs as black flowers bloomed before her eyes. The shock of impact, the water's chill clawing at her marrow, rocks as sharp as demon's teeth tearing her flesh-all of it secondary to the burning in her chest, the screaming in her head, the desperation forcing her mouth open to the black and the salt and the death that lay inside a single lungful.

Breathe.

She swam up. Or down. One as good as the other, the swell tumbling her like throwing sticks between forests of cruel stone, slick with grasping weed. Dull roaring in her ears, pressing her down, the blinding desire for oxygen becoming more than just a need; a reflex impulse over which she finally lost all control.

BREATHE.

She opened her lungs to the ocean, and the ocean dived inside.

Yukiko woke with a start, sobbing, gasping as sweet, blessed air filled her lungs. Her clothing was drenched, hair plastered to her face in thick, black drifts. She tried to claw it from her eyes, felt restraints around her wrists; leather thongs binding her to the flanks of an iron bed frame, clean sheets entwined about her ankles. She thrashed for a moment, vertigo swelling, staring around the dank, gray room without any idea where she was.

A voice spoke. Tangled words she didn't understand.

She jerked toward the sound, saw a fierce-looking man reaching for her. Perhaps thirty years old, dressed in a long white coat of a strange cut, old bloodstains at the cuffs. Cropped dark hair and a pale, weather-beaten face, framed by a pointed beard.

She shied away, kicked against the ties on her ankles. The man held her shoulders and shook her gently, mouthing nonsensical words as his features coalesced. A long scar ran down his right cheek, another curved along his left, and he was missing his left ear entirely. His right eye was chalk-white; probably blinded by whatever had mangled his face. But beneath salt-encrusted eyebrows, she saw his left eye was a pale, sparkling blue.

White skin.

Blue eyes.

My G.o.ds, he's gaijin.

Smoothing the hair from her face, he spoke more of his incomprehensible language. Yukiko pulled back from his touch, but he offered a tin cup, filled with fresh water. The taste of salt was thick on her tongue, throat parched, and she gulped it down without pause. Eyes closed in the mercy of dimming thirst, she was startled by another voice speaking from the doorway.

"Piotr."

The only round-eyes she'd ever seen were the merchantmen selling leather goods on the Kigen docks, so it was difficult to judge. But as she squinted at the speaker, she guessed this second gaijin was only a little older than she. Damp, shoulder-length blond hair swept behind his ears, a small tuft of beard on his chin, tanned skin. There was a symmetry to his features she might have found handsome if he didn't look so utterly alien. Scruffy red tunic of a bizarre cut, decorated with a shawl of pale-gray fur, thick leather gloves, insignia on his collars, goggles slung around his neck. He stared at her with eyes the color of tarnished silver, burning with curiosity.

There was something familiar about him ...

As she watched, he took a small cylinder of white paper from a flat tin box in his coat, put it in his mouth. He drew a small slab of dull steel from a pocket, touched it to the stick. Pale gray smoke drifted from the end of the paper cylinder, filling the room with the scent of cinnamon and honey. His hands were shaking.

The smell dragged a dim memory back up through the sea-drenched fog in her brain: she was curled up on rain-slick metal, coughing lungfuls of brine. A silhouette crouched over her, thick rope lashed around his waist, sodden blond hair plastered to his face.

She remembered her mouth had tasted strange. Something over the salt and bile ...

Cinnamon and honey.

"You..." she said. "You saved me?"

The blond boy spoke-incomprehensible and guttural. The dark-haired man stood and walked to the doorway, and the pair talked in hushed tones, glancing over occasionally while Yukiko's eyes roamed the room.

Some kind of hospice, lined with metal cots, perhaps a dozen in all. The sharp smell of liquor and burned hair, jars of chemicals stacked beneath a cast-iron sink. Gray walls, glistening with damp, wind howling through ventilation ducts lining the ceiling. Grubby bulbs in rusted, wall-mounted housings, flickering in time with the toneless howl of the wind outside. Beneath it, she could hear the roll and crack of surf, thunder rumbling across sharp rock.

The ocean's song.

She reached out with the Kenning, tentative, the headache cinching at the base of her skull. She could feel the gaijin in the room, just like she'd felt the people of the Kage village; indistinct smudges of alien warmth. Pushing them aside, she groped around the nearby darkness, felt the impression of something warm; an animal with a familiar shape, far too small to be a thunder tiger.

Gritting her teeth, she stretched into the gloom beyond, trying to wrest the Kenning under some kind of control. It felt like opening herself up to a hurricane, stepping naked into wind and fire, a rolling sea beneath her. She could sense a cl.u.s.ter of warmth; dozens of gaijin crammed together, above, below, around. Pushing out further. Wincing at the pain. Feeling something warm in the distance, the sound of a tempest, a flash of heat.

Buruu?

And then she sensed them. Far below, like nothing she'd touched before. Cold and slippery and bejeweled, staring back at her with eyes of polished yellow gla.s.s.

Hissing.

She withdrew, slammed the door shut on her power, folded down on herself and drew a long, shuddering breath. Even with her newfound strength, she hadn't been able to sense Buruu. Was he unconscious? Dead? What had happened to him?

Blinking, ignoring the pounding ache in her head, she tried to remember. The sensation of falling came first; the terrifying split second of inertia as momentum failed and gravity took hold. Choppy red water beneath her, rising fast. Impact knocking the breath from her lungs. Sodden clothes dragging her down, shapes in the sky above as lightning flashed.

Aras.h.i.tora. Two males.

And they were fighting.

"Shima?"

The familiar word pulled her back into the room, into the half-blind stare of the dark-haired man. The gaijin was looking at her intently, arms folded, a far throw from friendly. The blond boy stared at the floor, sucking on the smoking stick, exhaling clouds of honey-scented gray. The headache was a raw wound drilled behind her ears, chiseled atop her spine.

"You Shima?" Astonishingly, the scarred man was speaking in her own tongue-he had a broken, bowlegged accent, but his words were Shiman nonetheless. Stepping closer, he pointed to her, then waved in a direction she presumed was south. The gaijin walked with a severe limp, and when his right foot hit the stone, she heard the c.h.i.n.k of metal.

"Hai," she nodded. "Shima."

The man scowled and turned on the blond boy, raising his hand as if to strike him, spitting angry gibberish. The boy flinched away, smoke stick crushed between gritted teeth.

"Please." She licked her lips, voice cracking. "Where am I?"

"Eh?" The scarred man frowned, turned toward her.

"Can you understand me?"

"Little." He pinched the air between forefinger and thumb. "Little."

"Where am I?" She annunciated the words clearly. "Where?"

He snapped at her-an angry spiel she didn't understand.

"I don't-"

Roaring, face growing red, storming over to the cot. He raised his hand and she shied away, cringing against the wall. The slap caught her full on the cheek, knocked her near-senseless, kindling the pain lurking behind her eyes. Sinking down onto the mattress, she screwed one eye shut in antic.i.p.ation of another blow.

"Piotr." The blond boy spoke a mouthful of tumbling words, concern plain in his voice.

Yukiko looked up at the dark-haired gaijin, blood in her mouth, salt biting at the split in her lip. She thrashed briefly against her restraints.

"You touch me again and I'll kill you..." she spat.

The man lowered his hand, calloused, broad as a war fan. He stared at his fingers and mumbled, limped back to the blond, spitting out another tangle of nonsense. The boy stalked from the room, wet footprints in his wake. The older man lurked by the doorway, running one finger down the scar beneath his eye, thunderclouds gathered over his head.

With shaking hands, he fished a wooden pipe carved like a fish from his pocket, stuffing it with dry leaves from a leather pouch. Yukiko could see a red jacket with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons beneath his white coat, more insignia pinned to the collar.

Crossed swords.

A soldier?

"Sorry." He waved to her face. "He sorry, you."

Yukiko stared at the man's leg, saying nothing. She could see a metal brace buckled around his shin, a piston-driven actuator at his knee. Flesh, augmented with machinery.

Like the Guild ...

The man snapped his fingers on another slab of burnished steel lifted from a breast pocket. Fire gleamed in his blind eye, deepened the shadow of the hooked scar along his left cheek as he coaxed his pipe to life. He snapped his fingers again and the flame was snuffed out.

"Who are you people?" she asked.

The man shrugged, muttered words Yukiko didn't understand. She hung her head, breathing deep, suddenly and terribly afraid. The scent drifting from the gaijin's lips reminded her of her father. Of cloying smoke curling up through a graying moustache. Of stained fingers and a bloated body wrapped all in white, waiting for the fire to claim it. And she hadn't even been there. Hadn't even said good-bye ...

Don't cry.

Don't you dare.

"G.o.ds?"

She looked up at the gaijin's face. He was pointing to the sky, the brow above his blind eye raised in question.

"Have G.o.ds?"

"Hai," she nodded. "I have G.o.ds."

The man put his pipe to his lips, shook his head, spoke through clenched teeth as he shuffled from the room.

"Pray."

Yukiko sat in the dark for long moments, waiting for the headache to subside. She could hear crashing surf, smell rust and oil hanging in the air. Shivering in her damp clothes, she clenched her fists repeatedly, thongs cutting into her wrists. And finally, when the ache had dimmed to a pale flicker, she pulled her slender defenses back together, brick by brick. A bulwark of all the substance she could muster; the rage Daichi had a.s.sured her was her greatest strength, mortar made of memories. Yoritomo's blade cleaving through Buruu's feathers. Her father's grave. His blood on her hands. Teeth gritted. Seething. And with her wall in place, she reached out with the Kenning again.

A quick, directionless stab, feeling for any sign of Buruu, like a shout in a darkened room. But there was nothing close to his warmth nearby, and the distant, muddy heat she sensed didn't wear his shape at all. Almost as soon as she opened herself up, the headache flared, the heat of the human bodies around her crackling, flame-bright and brittle. Beneath her feet, she felt those things waiting for her, cold and ancient and reptilian. And so she shut it off, locked inside her skull and leaving herself utterly alone.

Her face felt tender where the scarred man had slapped her, tongue probing her split lip. She tasted salt. Blood.

Closing her eyes, she remembered the smaller warmth she'd felt close by. Reaching out with a tiny, narrowed sliver of herself, she found it not far away. Curled up beside a heating duct, just a few doors down. An old blanket beneath him, tail wagging as he worried a strip of rawhide clamped between his front paws.

A dog.

h.e.l.lo?

Head tilted to one side, tail falling still, one ear standing to attention.

who that!?

I'm Yukiko.

who?

Yukiko.

She could feel the shape of the hound's mind, at once strange and familiar, like an old coat belonging to a stranger, yet fitting like it had been tailored for her. He was warm and soft, all curiosity and energy, tail beginning to wag again as she felt around his mind.

food!?

I don't have any food. I'm sorry. What's your name?

red!

h.e.l.lo, Red.

where you? can't see!?

I'm in a locked room down the hall.

play!?

Maybe later.

Can you tell me what this place is, Red?... is?What do the men do here?catching the sky!Catching the sky?so silly!She frowned, trying to puzzle out what he meant, how she could frame the question in terms he'd understand. It had been years since she'd spent time swimming in the thoughts of a real dog; the last she'd Kenned was Aisha's puppy, but she'd known him only briefly. Hounds could be intelligent, but they didn't understand human concepts, focused instead on the immediate, the primary. As if on cue, she could feel the cold, wet nose of his thoughts snooping around the sliver she'd lodged inside his head.food!?