“But this is war, Kin. The Yukiko you knew? That frightened little girl in the Shōgun’s palace? She’s gone.” Fire in her eyes. “She’s dead.”
“No steel in me…” he whispered, lips twisting in a bitter smile.
“It’s bullshit, Kin.” She took his hand, entwined her fingers with his own. “Don’t you believe it. Any of it. But know you have enemies here. People who see you as Guild first and everything else second. Stay close to Daichi while I’m gone. And stay as far from Ayane as you can. Don’t give them a reason to doubt you.”
“Why would I bother?” he spat. “They’re doing perfectly well without one…”
“Kin—”
“I hope you find the answers you seek.” He pulled his hand away, let it drop to his side. “I know Buruu will keep you safe.”
Hurt in her eyes as she chewed her lip, searched the dark for the right words to say.
“Kiss me good-bye?”
Hovering uncertain. Wanting it more than he could say. Pride and anger shushing want, leaving it alone and friendless. All he’d given, all he’d sacrificed, and this was the life he’d purchased. Watching her fly away. Leaving him, just like she’d left him in Kigen. Alone.
Again.
He put his hands to her cheeks, feeling the satin warmth of her skin, the sensation of it beneath his tingling fingertips almost crushing his resolve to powder. But in the end, tilting her head up to his, her lips parting ever so softly, he leaned down and kissed her gently on the brow.
“Good-bye, Stormdancer,” he said.
And then he turned and walked away.
Part of him screamed he was an idiot. That he would regret it. But anger and pride urged him on, the burning fuel of the indignant fool, and he stalked off into the dark with the waterfall of his blood thrashing in his ears. She called his name again, just once. But he didn’t stop. Didn’t turn his head. And somewhere deep in the back of his mind, a tiny thought found its voice for the first time; a whisper almost too faint to hear.
It kept him awake most of the night, belly-up on his mattress of straw, staring at the ceiling with sandbag eyes. Breathing. Listening. The limbo of insomnia, gray and bottomless as the hours dragged on forever, leaving him in the muddy dawn with a heart exhausted and seven words lodged in his mind like a handful of splinters.
The same question.
Over and over again.
What the hells are you doing here?
10
SALT AND COPPER
Yoshi’s lashes fluttered against his cheeks as he stole along fly-blown gutters on four feather-light feet. Towers of fetid waste looming all around him, nostrils filled with rot and fresh death, blood leaking from a broken skull onto cracked cobbles. He skulked past a snarling brood—a sleek and fearsome bunch, fourteen strong—scratching and fighting as they tore strips from the new bones. Squealing and spitting at him as he scampered by. A warning. A challenge. First spoils to the finders. Leavings to the rest. Our meat. Our alley. Our dirt.
He could smell salt and sweet copper, his stomach growled for the slippery, lovely wanting of it, warm and sticky-lush. But on he scampered, up through the spindly broken-leg alleys, a stale ocean of refuse in which to swim. Whiskers twitching. Mangy hide inflamed from the furious worrying of a dozen fat, black fleas. Pausing to scratch with scabrous little claws, delighting in the bloody relief.
Stopping in the alley mouth across from the whorehouse, blinking with eyes as dark as river water, his tail twitching. Rough-looking men were gathered in the stoop, arms inked from shoulder to wrist, speaking in hushed, lotus-scarred voices. No clan tattoos on their shoulders, no, just floral patterns and geisha girls and interlocking scorpions marking them as Burakumin. Lowborns all—turned to the shadow trade calling every man birthed in Kigen’s gutters. The fist and the fade. The smoke and the skin. A den of them. A seething, sweltering nest of them.
Yakuza.
Minutes passed. Hours. The Moon God Tsukiyomi rode low in the sky behind a choking veil of fumes. More painted men strolled up to the stoop, ushered inside with gap-toothed smiles. And finally, as the hours wore on and the Goddess Amaterasu was just beginning to lighten the eastern skies, two men exited the building. The first, a skulking knife-thin bastard, yellowed teeth like broken stumps in dark gums. The second, a short, broad lump with piggy eyes and cauliflower ears. On their shoulders, each gangster carried a small beaten satchel, filled with the clink of muffled coin. Yoshi felt his whiskers curl, yellow teeth bared in what might have been a smile, and he whispered thanks to the body he rode and stole on back to his own.
He opened his eyes
the room throbbing and all
a-shudder flexed inside long limbs and hairless
flesh and grubby cloth the body he’d lived most of his
life inside feeling
for just a moment
longer
like something utterly
repulsively
wrong.
Jurou was sitting across from him as his vision came into shuddering focus. Dark bangs hanging in dew-moist eyes, empty lotus pipe utterly wasted on those perfect lips.
“Well?” he said.
“Same time. Every morning just before the dawn,” Yoshi smiled. “It’s a money-house for certain.”
“Who runs it?”
“Scorpion Children. Biggest yakuza crew in Downside.”
“You sure you want to start that heavy?”
“You recall a time old Yoshi ever did things by halves, Princess?”
“I’m just not—”
Yoshi put his finger to Jurou’s lips, frowning toward the door.
“Daken’s back. Hana too.”
Yoshi arranged himself on a pile of cushions in the corner, Jurou leaning against his bare chest. He sipped the dregs of their rice wine, felt the big tom drawing closer, the way a magnet must feel as iron draws near. Slouching on his cushion, legs askew, hand snagged in Jurou’s hair as Hana’s key twisted in the lock. Tipping his split-brimmed hat away from his eyes, he aimed a crooked smile at his little sister.
“This is the part where I juggle some comedy about what the cat dragged—”
Hana stole into the room, looking paler than usual, skin filmed in a sheen of fresh sweat. Behind her loomed one of the biggest men Yoshi had ever raised an eyebrow at. A straw hat pulled down low over his brow, ragged black cloak over street-worn thread. Door-broad shoulders, a jaw you could break your knuckles on, a few steps on the right side of handsome, truth be told—at least from what Yoshi could see. He walked with a pronounced limp.
“Well, well,” Jurou smiled. “Took my advice, girl?”
Hana muttered a mouthful, looking embarrassed. Shuffling before the pair like a disobedient child before the Great Judge, she gestured feebly to the giant still looming in the doorway. She spoke so fast her words tripped over each other in the rush to her teeth.
“AkihitothisismybrotherYoshiandhisfriendJurou.”
Jurou’s grin was all Kitsune-in-the-henhouse, aimed squarely at Hana, but he spared a glance for the newcomer. “How do?”
Yoshi’s eyes hadn’t left the big man. He nodded once. Slow as centuries.
“Akihito-san is going to be staying here for a few days,” Hana said.
“Do tell,” Yoshi frowned.
“Only a few.”
“Not like you to have houseguests, sister-mine.” His eyes shifted to the big man. “Can he cook? Doesn’t look much of a dancer.”