Daichi kicked at the Guildsman tackling him, rolling away and drawing the old katana at his back from its battered scabbard, teeth gritted in agony. A second Lotusman advanced, bra.s.s fingers outstretched, and the old man struck with the blade, a dull note ringing out as folded steel connected with case-hardened bra.s.s. The hiss of breather bellows, the sound of metallic chuckling as the figures surrounded the old man, his sword raised high, gleaming in the light of b.l.o.o.d.y eyes.

They lunged and he moved; an ebb tide, flowing back then crashing forward, his katana's point skewering one Guildsman through the glowing red gla.s.s over his eye. The Lotusman screamed, a high-pitched, agonized squeal, thick with reverb as he fell, blood streaming down a blank, motionless face. A quick strike severed the breathing tubes of two more Lotusmen, and the old man staggered back, one hand pressed to his ribs, the other still clutching his blade, knuckles white upon the hilt. Gasping for breath. Blood at his lips.

Swordmaster the old man might have been, but he was one, beaten and sick, and they were six, hard and cold. More still rushing up the stairs now; heavily armed Guild mercenaries with Kobiashi needle-throwers. And they fell on him, just a dull weight of numbers without finesse or craft, bearing him down as he thrashed, stabbing and punching, cursing them with every ragged, gasping breath. Curling up under their blows and finally falling still as they plunged the blacksleep needles into his flesh, his stare locked on the boy who even now sat slumped at the table, bathed in blood, flames reflected in knife-bright eyes.

Kin heard his father's voice, the knowing rebuke amidst the workshop's thrum. The words he'd heard so many times, the simple rote that had been as much a part of his life as breathing. And in that moment, he finally understood their truth.

Skin is strong.

Flesh is weak.

"G.o.dsd.a.m.n you, Kin," the old man whispered. "G.o.dsd.a.m.n you to the h.e.l.ls."

The boy watched the light in the old man's eyes fade as the blacksleep dragged Daichi down into unconsciousness. He felt pale hands on his shoulders, insectoid clicking as eight silver arms encircled him, holding him tight.

"I'm sure they will," he said.

51.

THE QUIET DARK.

Michi sheared through the ceiling of Aisha's chambers and down into a spray of bright red. Her chainkatana parted a head from its shoulders as she tumbled into a crouch, taking a second foe's legs off at the knees. Metallic screeching. Spattered walls. Rising into a faceful of silver needles.

The air about her sang, whipped into bright, cutting notes, pain behind it. Stepping backward, she lashed out with the chainwakizashi, heard jagged teeth sparking on metal, blinking the blood from her lashes. Gasping, eyes burning, sweat slick on her skin, gown weighing her down like the air in a tomb.

They had the seeming of demons: featureless faces, bodies clad in skintight, gleaming brown, long skirts studded with fat, gleaming buckles, eight impossibly thin arms arrayed about each in a gleaming halo. But Michi saw mechabacii on their chests, recognized them from the palanquin at the sky-docks, and she knew at last the h.e.l.l they'd been spat from.

"Guildsmen," she hissed.

The things lunged with those silver limbs, terrifyingly fast, cutting into her right arm and knocking the katana away. Michi's riposte with the wakizashi opened one along its belly, up into its chest, and the thing shrieked, distorted and metallic, stumbling backward and trying to staunch the glistening sausage-flow of innards bulging from the rend.

The final Guildsman filled the air with silver, Michi shifting onto her back foot as needles whipped and whistled about her. She crouched low, aimed a sweeping kick at its ankles, and hampered by the buckles and skirts, the Guildsman was forced backward. Its heel hit a puddle of blood, and with a squeak across polished pine, it lost balance. Spinning on the spot, Michi hurled the chainwakizashi at the thing's chest, punching through the mechabacus with the shrieking saw of steel teeth and a rain of brightly colored sparks.

The Guildsman stared at the blade mutely, sinking to its knees. Retrieving her chainkatana from the b.l.o.o.d.y ground, Michi swung it without ceremony. The thing tumbled forward, headless, silver limbs twitching as if in a fit.

"Michi," said a voice. "Thank the G.o.ds."

She saw her then, throat seizing tight, and it was all she could do to choke out a reply.

"Aisha..."

She lay on a grand oaken bed, red silk pulled up to her chin, pillows all about her. Tomo, her small black-and-white terrier, sat beside her, growling even as his little tail wagged. Machines were arrayed on either side of her; towering contraptions set with dials and gauges and bellows, transistors and vacuum tubes. Michi dashed across the room, sheathing the blade at her waist, grabbing Aisha's hand.

"No time to explain, we have to move..."

She tugged hard, trying to drag Aisha from her bed. The Lady flopped forward, hair across her face, a deadweight sack of meat and bones. The silk sheet slipped away from her chin, bunched about her waist, and Michi realized with growing horror that the machines at her bedside, the cables spilling from their outputs ... all of them were snaking across the floor, up onto the bed, and from there ...

Into Aisha.

Into her arms. Into the bayonet studs puncturing her flesh. Into the device laid upon her chest, thin bra.s.s ribs and diodes, the bellows in the machine beside her moving up and down in time with her breath.

"My G.o.ds..." Michi whispered, pressing Aisha back into the pillows. "What have they done to you?"

"Saved my life."

Her voice was hollow, an almost imperceptible reverberation at the end of every word.

"Forcing my heart to beat, my lungs to breathe." Her eyes gleamed with the beginnings of tears. "Amaterasu, protect me..."

The tears broke, spilling over her lashes and down pallid cheeks.

"I can't feel anything, Michi." Aisha's voice became a whisper, choked and tiny. "My brother, he..." She screwed her eyes shut. "I can't feel anything below my neck..."

"No," Michi breathed. "No, that can't be. I saw you at the sky-docks."

"Propped up like a corpse in its box. Gagged behind my breather. Plugged into that accursed chair and the contraption beneath. All for show."

"But you were seen on the balcony..."

Aisha's eyes flickered to one of the machines; a vertical trolley with a pyramid of wheels flanking either side, lined with gleaming buckles and belts.

"They take me out on the balcony in that," she whispered. "Strapping me in and trundling me into the sun. Just long enough that a stray courtier or bushiman could see me, to quash any rumors of my death. They were going to haul me to my wedding in it."

"Good G.o.ds..."

Michi took Aisha's hand, but it was cold and limp as corpse flesh. The Lady's skin was pale, run through with blue veins, fingers so thin they looked like twigs. Michi looked up and down the bed, tears spilling down through powder and kohl and blood to patter upon the sheets like rain.

In the distance, a hollow boom rocked the city, screams ringing through the night. Aisha's eyes flickered to the window.

"What is happening out there?"

"I don't know. I think the Kage are attacking Kigen. But they've drawn Hiro's forces away from the palace. I can get you out of here."

"I cannot lift a finger, love." Aisha looked into Michi's eyes. "I cannot feel a thing."

"No, it's these machines." Michi whirled on the banks of equipment, desperate eyes roaming the impossible stretch of diode and cog and cable. "They've stopped you moving. The Guild have tricked you. They've just made you think-"

"I felt it, Michi," Aisha said. "I felt it when Yoritomo broke my neck."

"No. That's not true. It can't be."

"She got away?" Light flared in Aisha's eyes, hot and desperate. "Yukiko? She and the thunder tiger escaped?"

"Hai," Michi nodded, blinked back burning tears. "The people sing songs about her, Aisha. Arashi-no-odoriko, they call her."

"Stormdancer," Aisha breathed. "It was worth it, then."

A gurgling intake of breath tore Michi's eyes away, down to the Guildsman slumped against the wall. It held an armful of its own innards, spilling purple and wet from its torn gut, the sundered mechabacus coughing counting beads into its lap. Michi glanced from the Guildsman to the tubes in Aisha's chest and arms. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up her chainkatana, murder in her eyes.

The Guildsman looked up at her approach, wet breath rattling in its lungs. It keeled over, choking, clawing at its back. And with a sound like breaking eggsh.e.l.ls, the silver orb on its spine split open, and a fist-sized metallic object tumbled out onto the floorboards.

Michi stepped back, fearing some kind of explosive. But the object unfurled eight tiny clockwork legs, stared at her with a red, glowing eye.

"Tang!Tang!Tang!Tang!" sang the spider-drone, as if outraged at the murder of its mother. Michi stepped forward and struck, scattering the floorboards with torn clockwork and a shower of bright blue sparks.

"They know," Aisha whispered. "They know you are here. They will be coming."

"Let them," Michi hissed.

"I will not have you die for me."

"Who said anything about-"

Michi heard it before she felt it; a distant rumble, as if a long-slumbering giant was yawning and stretching in his cradle beneath the earth. The ground trembled, the whole palace shaking, dust drifting from the eaves. Little Tomo yowled at the sky, hopped in small circles on the bedclothes. Michi ran to the bed and threw herself over Aisha, holding her tight as the palace shook on its foundations, windows cracking at the corners. She lay there until the earthquake died, trying not to notice the smell of metal and grease seeping from her mistress's pores.

"The G.o.ds are angry," Aisha breathed. "The reckoning comes."

"Aisha, I have to get you out of here."

"Will you carry me, Michi-chan? All by yourself?"

They heard a distant booming; heavy weight pounding against the iron-shod doors to the bedchambers. Shouted demands to open in the name of various clanlords. Tiger. Phoenix. Dragon.

"You cannot bring these machines, Michi." Aisha was looking at her now, tears gone. "They are my lungs. They are my heart. Without them, I would have gone to the peace I earned long ago."

"But I can't just leave you here!"

"No."

Aisha looked into her eyes, a small, sad smile on her face.

"No, you cannot."

Michi blinked, lips parted as she tried to breathe. "You can't ask me that..."

"I would do it myself." A bitter smile. "But if I could wield the blade, there would be no call for its mercy."

"Aisha, no..."

"No wedding. No Shgun." Aisha licked at dry, cracked lips. "Do not leave me like this, love. They have picked over my bones enough. Dragged me from the quiet dark into wretched daylight. Show them I am theirs no longer, Michi. Tell them I am done."

Michi couldn't breathe. Couldn't see for the tears.

"I can't..."

"The last of Kazumitsu's seed, that's what they called me. As if that's all I was. Just a womb to produce another heir for this cursed empire. And do you know what they did, Michi? G.o.ds, could anyone begin to imagine?"

Aisha stared into s.p.a.ce, her voice paling to a whisper.

"I was too fragile to receive Hiro's seed in the usual fashion. And he found no l.u.s.t for me in my current condition. But the line of Kazumitsu needed its precious son. The Guild needed to cement their Shgun's legitimacy. So do you know what they used?" She gritted her teeth, spit the words. "A metal tube. A handful of lubricant. As if I were cattle, Michi. As if I were livestock."

"My G.o.ds..."

"Lord Izanagi, deliver me." Aisha turned her eyes to the ceiling, voice cracking. "Have mercy upon me, great Maker. If never before this moment, take mercy upon me now."

"Aisha, I can't..."

"You can."

"I can't."

"You must."

Michi held her breath, squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head over and over. She heard the distant sound of heavy blows on iron-shod doors. Splitting timbers.

"I asked when you raised your hand to me, remember?" Aisha said. "I told you I would ask everything of you. I asked if you would give all. Do you remember?"

"I r-remember."

"Don't make me beg, Michi. Give me that much."

"Oh, G.o.ds..."

A breathless hush fell over the room, a stillness, broken only by the hiss and click of accursed machines. The machines that d.a.m.ned Aisha to this half-life, bid her languish in the gloom, violated by monstrosities. Michi clenched her teeth, forced herself to suck in one shuddering lungful, tasting smoke and blood, metal and grease, the bile of hatred.

Tears spilled from Aisha's eyes. "I am so afraid..."

Michi cupped her cheek in one b.l.o.o.d.y palm, fingers trembling.

"It will be all right, Aisha."

The woman closed her eyes, reached down and found a calm, long and quiet and deep. Just the slow rise and fall of her chest, the deep void behind her eyes, dark as the womb where first she slumbered. She opened her eyes, and Michi saw strength there, the old strength that had defied a nation.

"Tell me good-bye, Michi-chan."

Michi leaned down and kissed her eyes, one after the other, salt on her lips. Aisha kept them closed, even after the kisses had ended, her face as serene as if she were sleeping.

"Good-bye, my Lady," Michi said.

The hair needle sliced through Aisha's skin, the unfeeling flesh above her pale, blue-scrawled wrists. Once. Twice. A dozen times. No beauty to it. No art. But no pain either.

Blood welled and flowed, sluggish and thick, bright upon the gleaming gold in Michi's hand. The machines beside the bed shuddered, groaning as if unwilling to let her go. Aisha's eyes remained closed, a soft slippage from torture into peaceful slumber. Not the gentle deliverance of a woman pa.s.sing in her bed, surrounded by loved ones after a life well-lived. Not a savior's death. Not a hero's.