“Um.” He held up the covering. “Can you hold this, please?”
The False-Lifer mutely complied, spider arms shuddering as its real hands cupped the metal. Yukiko felt her stomach turn, swallowing hard, mouth tasting of vomit. Her legs were trembling. Eyes watering. Sparrows called in the distance, the sound closer to screaming than singing. Three monkeys gathered in the trees overhead, roaring and shaking the branches. Heat all around her. Hands in fists.
ARE YOU WELL, SISTER?
I’m fine.
“What’s your name?” Kin said.
“Kin, don’t talk to it,” Yukiko growled.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Isn’t that the point of this exercise?”
Yukiko glared, scraped rain-slicked hair from her eyes. Kin turned back to the False-Lifer, unspooled several leads from its mechabacus, began tinkering in the machine’s guts. He offered an apologetic glance as he touched its breast again.
“What’s your name?” he repeated.
“… My mother’s name was Kei. Gifted to me when she died, as custom bids.”
He paused, looked into featureless glass eyes. “But what’s your name?”
A long silence. Yukiko ground her teeth. She could hear the sounds of a thousand gaijin children, sobbing as they were marched to slaughter inside the greasy yellow innards of the chapterhouses. High-pitched screaming amidst the crackling pyres around the Burning Stones. People like her, people with the Kenning, put to the torch for the sake of the Guild’s ridiculous “Way of Purity.” The False-Lifer’s reply sounded like a nest of spitting vipers.
“Ayane.”
“What chapterhouse are you from?”
“Yama.”
“Fox lands are a long walk from here.” Kin raised an eyebrow and went to work with a pair of wire snips. “How did you make it all the way? False-Lifers can’t fly.”
“I stole aboard a Guild liner in Yama harbor and fired the escape pod.” The spider limbs flexed, a ripple of silver in the air around it. “I flew as far as I could. Then I walked.”
“How did you know our direction?” Kin looked up from the innards, eyes illuminated by a burst of sparks.
“The Guild has known the general location of the Kagé stronghold since they rescued the two of you from the Thunder Child’s ruins. Since then, they have set up triangulation towers around the Iishi. Every time the Kagé transmit a radio signal, they zero closer.”
“If they know that much, why haven’t they massed their fleet to burn this forest down?” Yukiko snapped.
The False-Lifer turned her gaze to the earth, steadfastly refusing to meet Yukiko’s eyes.
“Much of the fleet is still overseeing the retreat in Morcheba. But the Guildsman you spared made it back to Yama with your message, Arashi-no-odoriko. The loss of three heavy ships was enough to give the Upper Blooms pause. The captain you killed was a war hero, you know. Kigen’s Third Bloom. Master of their fleet.”
“So?”
“So they are afraid of you.” It swallowed. “You and your thunder tiger.”
Kin was staring at her, the memory of a hundred dead Guildsmen swimming unspoken in his eyes. Yukiko licked her lips, feeling her skin crawl as the False-Lifer’s limbs shivered. She ran one hand along Buruu’s neck, fingers deep in feathers’ warmth.
I don’t trust her.
SENSIBLE.
It’s too good to be true that there would be more like Kin.
IN ALL HONESTY, THAT PART OF HER TALE IS EASY TO BELIEVE.
A rebellion inside the Guild? No, they’re just telling us what we want to hear.
THOSE OF THE GUILD ARE BORN TO IT. NO CHOICE. NO CONTROL. NOT SO HARD TO IMAGINE SOME WOULD RESENT THAT YOKE.
I don’t believe one of them would just tiptoe out of a chapterhouse and come all this way to find Kin. It’s probably just a survivor from the fleet we burned. Lying to save its skin.
WE LEFT ONLY ONE ALIVE, YUKIKO. YOU KNOW THAT.
This doesn’t make any godsdamned sense. It’s lying.
YOU MEAN “SHE” IS LYING.
I mean “it.”
She eyed the False-Lifer up and down, lip curling.
“Is that why your leaders are backing Hiro? Because they’re too spineless to come here themselves now? They’d rather risk men with wives and children in the battle to bring me down, right? Better to see them die than more of their precious Shatei?”
“I am from Yama.” All nine of its functional arms rippled, and Yukiko was appalled to recognize the gesture as a shrug. “I do not know the politics of First House, or why the First Bloom bids Shateigashira Kensai to support the Tora boy. But I know seventy percent of our Munitions Sect were requisitioned by Kigen four weeks ago.”
Yukiko stared blankly.
“The Munitions Sect build machines that require human control,” Kin offered. “Motor-rickshaw, shreddermen, sky-ship engines and so on. Like I used to.”
Yukiko narrowed her eyes. “What are they working on?”
“I do not know, Stormdancer.” Another grotesque, multi-armed shrug.
“Don’t call her that.” Kin plucked three transistors from the mechabacus. “Her name is Yukiko.”
The boy snipped a final set of wires, gathered up the contraption’s guts and stuffed them back into its housing. Sealing the device closed with a few hasty screws, he stepped back.
“Done.”
The False-Lifer looked at Atsushi’s blade poised against its throat. The boy shifted his grip, one word from a bloodbath. Kin was watching her with pleading eyes. Yukiko stared for a pregnant moment, arms folded, eyes narrowed. The rain was falling harder, fat, clear droplets pounding the leaves around them and soaking everyone to the bones.
Everyone except the False-Lifer, of course.
“I have never seen rain that was not black before.” It turned its palms to the sky, droplets pattering upon its body, beading and running like quicksilver. “It is beautiful.”
Yukiko’s eyes were on the blade gleaming in Atsushi’s hand. The raindrops glittering on the steel like polished jewels.
We should just get everything we can from her, then bury her.
Buruu growled.
WHAT IF SHE SPEAKS TRUTH? WHAT IF SHE IS WHAT SHE SAYS?
No one leaves the Guild. Everyone knows that.
EXCEPT YOUR KIN.
Don’t call him that.
I DID NOT TRUST HIM EITHER, REMEMBER? YET WITHOUT HIM, NEITHER OF US WOULD BE HERE.
I know that.
THEN YOU KNOW WE CANNOT END THIS GIRL ON MERE SUSPICION.
Yukiko hissed, rubbed her eyes with balled fists. The Kenning headache was slinking forward on fox-light feet. The noise. The heat. Lurking in the back of her skull with leaden hands and bated breath.
“Take off your skin,” she said.
“What?” Kin raised an eyebrow. “What for?”
“If we’re taking it back, we’re not bringing a tracking device with us. It takes its skin and mechabacus off and we bury them here.”
“The mechabacus won’t work anym—”
“That’s the bargain, Kin. We bury its skin, or we bury it.”
“She’s not an ‘it.’” Kin frowned. “Her name is Ayane.”
Isao scowled, shook his head. Yukiko turned to the False-Lifer, eyes and voice cold.