He kicked back his chair, sent it spinning across the room, adopting a lilting voice.

"Pardon me, n.o.ble Lords, I'll just flip this rebel b.i.t.c.h her room key and help her steal the First Daughter right under your noses. Oh no, don't get up, I can see myself away..."

"I can't just leave her in there, Yoshi."

"f.u.c.k her!" Yoshi shouted. "f.u.c.k all these people. It's our business like black is white's. If this city had half an inkling of what we are, they'd chain us to the Burning Stones and set us on fire. If they had the full reckoning, they'd give us an ending the G.o.ds would get queasy on. We don't owe them s.h.i.t."

"Where's Jurou?" Hana stormed toward the bedroom. "Maybe he can talk some G.o.dsd.a.m.n sense into you."

"He's not in there..." Yoshi said.

"He's not in here." Hana's voice trailed out from the bedroom.

"Mm-hmm."

Hana walked out into the living area, Daken prowling around her legs. "Where is he?"

"Out." A shrug. "Getting supplies."

"You just let him go without telling you where?"

"Girl, you seem a good deal confused about the control I have over that boy."

... hungry ...

Hana hefted Daken onto her shoulder. She petted the tom as he purred like a sky-ship engine, sucking her bottom lip.

... he speaks true. no way for you to return to palace ...

I have to try.

... so tired of living . .?

I can't just leave her in there, Daken.

... bored now ...

You're not really being helpful, you know.

... bored and hungry ...

Hana sighed, pressed at the ache building in the bridge of her nose. Yoshi was impossible, just stubborn and pigheaded and stupid and she wanted to grab him and shake him and scream- "Even if you had some way of getting back into the palace, you're not gonna find Akihito anyways." Yoshi touched his bandaged ribs and winced. "Not unless you're looking in Kigen jail. He's fodder for the Judge."

"You don't know that."

"Think he danced away from the bushi' on that leg of his? Fooling yourself."

"Shut up, G.o.dsdammit!"

Hana slumped amongst the cushions, rocked back and forth, refusing to let it get on top of her. Refusing to think about what might have happened after they left him alone, what might be happening to him right now. To think of the people she was letting down. To cry. Yoshi took a deep breath, ran one hand over his braids. Crossing the room, he knelt beside her, took her hand in his. Daken leapt into her lap, staring back and forth between them, half tail twitching side to side.

... ear itches ...

"Listen, I know you think you're helping." Yoshi scratched the tom's ear nubs without thinking. "You're doing something important. But these people ... they're not worth risking your skin over. You think they'd do the same for you?"

"You don't get it..." Her face crumpled and she squeezed her eye shut, holding her breath as her shoulders shook. "You just don't understand..."

"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. n.o.body else is going to. Let the clans fight their wars. Let the Kage and the Guild sc.r.a.p 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 s.p.a.ce, five years gone. Saw the glint of candlelight on broken gla.s.s. 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 bra.s.s. 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s and down each bicep. Her forearms were painted with old myths: Enma- 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 gla.s.s-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 sake. 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, bra.s.s 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.

41.

A THOUSAND DIAMONDS.

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 gla.s.s, 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 G.o.d 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 bra.s.s 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 sc.r.a.p 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.

Beloved, I know I will never see your face again. The skin upon it, nor flesh beneath it. But the memory of it keeps me warm, when all else turns to winter and all hope is gone.

I am prisoner to the gaijin. Our ship crashed in the tempest, only five of us rescued from the waters. And now they keep us here as prisoners, waiting for spring to ease the storms enough to transport us to Morcheba, and from there, to a fate only the G.o.ds can know. But the gaijin who delivers this note is a friend; greater than any I deserve for the life I have led. If you are reading this, Piotr has fulfilled his vow against all odds. Treat him well, love.

I wish I could hold you one last time. I wish more than anything to feel your body against mine. I wish our daughter could know her father's face. I wish I could see her in all her perfection, before the False-Lifers run her flesh through with cables and encase her beauty in cold metal. I wish I could see the day when the machines are torn from Shima's skin, when the mechabacus falls silent for the last time, when the rebellion smashes First House to flaming splinters. When a love like ours can bloom in the sun, not endure silently within prisons of bra.s.s.

But I will not do any of these things. This is my fate. And for my part in the world we created, I deserve no better. I think myself blessed to have known you for the brief moments I did. And I go to my end with a gentle smile, at peace with the knowledge that, for all my crimes, fate saw fit to grant me you. Such a gift would not be wasted on one who is d.a.m.ned. Perhaps what little I did to aid the rebellion is enough to see Enma- judge me fair.

Pray for me, love. Pray that the Judge of the Nine h.e.l.ls weighs me true. That when I stand before him, he will not only consider what I did, but what I made possible. And I will pray for you, for all the rebels that remain, that you may finish what we have started: Death to the Serpents. An end to the Guild. Freedom for Shima.

I love you. With all I have in me. Tell our daughter I love her also. Know that in my final moments, I will think of your face. With my last breath, I will whisper your name, Misaki.

Always yours, Takeo Yukiko stared at the page long after she'd finished reading, letting the words sink into her skin. So it was all true. Ayane's story about a hidden faction within the Guild. An army of insurgents, just as devoted as the Kage, working to bring the Guild to its knees.

And she had thought the girl a liar. A spy.

Just like the gaijin thought about me.

"Death to the Serpents?" she whispered.

What in the name of the G.o.ds did that mean?

"I have to get out of here." She folded the letter carefully, put one hand to her throbbing brow. "I have to get back."

"Back Shima?" Piotr took the letter, returned it to the leather wallet with a strange reverence. "Find Takeo love? Find Misaki-san?"

"Hai," she nodded. "I will find her."

The gaijin placed the leather wallet in her hands.

"You hold," he said. "You take."

"I will."