Buruu!
Leaping across to another shelf. Shearing through an outstretched, skinless arm. Sweat in her eyes. Breath pounding in her lungs. Blood on her lips, in her mouth, in her veins. Painted Brethren closing in about her. Backing away toward the edge of her last shelf-top and clawing the loose hair from her eyes.
BURUU!
Thunder crashed, shaking the tiles above. Lashing out with her blade. Glancing behind. Grasping hands. Snow-white eyes. Grinning teeth. Ink-stained fingers. Heels at the edge.
Nowhere to run.
Thunder again, closer this time, loud enough to shake the floor. Yukiko gasped as the ceiling above disintegrated, clay tiles smashed to dust and rubble; a tumbling, jagged waterfall crashing onto brother Shun and smashing him to pulp. The shelf collapsed below her and she fell with a shriek, landed hard on the stone. Hands clawing at her, pulling her to her feet. And then a roar, the sound of wind and pistons, a white shape diving through the shattered ceiling and splintering the flagstones beside her. Shelves tumbled like dominos, Buruu roaring again, lashing out and splitting the brother holding her in half. He struck a second time, wings spread wide, clapping together with concussive force, timbers blasted apart, leather scrolls spinning in the crackling air like dead leaves.
SISTER!
Sheathing her sword. Leaping onto his shoulders. A sea of figures all around. Rain swirling through the ceiling, static electricity setting her skin tingling. Talons parting flesh, arms from shoulders, heads from necks. A roar shaking the stones beneath them. But in a rush, the sudden press of a starving gravity, they were airborne, more shelves tumbling in the blast of their wings, soaring up through the sundered tiles and out into the open air. Wind in their faces. Rain in their eyes. Blood on their lips, spilling from their ears. They were flooded (she was flooded), body shaking, nausea rising in a rush, out of her throat and into the void, spraying through their (her) teeth as she clawed and tore and pulled back from the brink, back into herself, into her body, this tiny trembling thing with no wings, clinging to his back, small and sick and afraid.
She slumped on his shoulders, wiping the blood and puke from her lips. The pain in her head was incandescent; a thing of rusted nails and serrated teeth and razor wire, coiled tight at the base of her skull. Panting. Breathless. Aching.
But alive.
Thank you, brother.
Buruu purred, thoughts kept to himself for fear of hurting her. She reached down to her obi, taking hold of Bishamon’s scroll, the oily, leathered surface giving birth to another round of nausea. The sight of those shelves lingered in her in memory, the miles of secrets and acres of skin. She wondered about the other truths kept there in the dark amidst that horrid brotherhood. What other secrets lay inked in that library of flesh.
But none of it mattered now. It had cost them precious days, the countdown to Hiro’s wedding ticking ever closer. But she’d gotten what she came for. She had what she needed.
She just hoped it had been worth it.
13
PROPOSAL
Blinding light was waiting for Hiro when he opened his eyes.
Squinting against the glare, he tried raising a hand to blot it out and realized he couldn’t move a muscle. Not that anything held him down, bound his arms to his side, or his body to the cool flat at his back. He simply felt nothing below his chin. A cold numbness, stained with vertigo, the dull sensation of something tugging at his core. He could hear wet clicking, as if a thousand larvae nested in the air above him, chewing blindly with oily mandibles. He inhaled and smelled blood, the sharp tang of metal.
Chi.
He lifted his head.
A dozen bulbous eyes stared back at him, blood-red, affixed in bone-smooth, mouthless faces, a tiny voice in back of his mind wondering how they breathed. Six figures were gathered around him; vaguely feminine forms with impossibly narrow waists. Clad head to foot in leather-brown membranes, mechabacii chattering upon their chests, buckles and straps running down their bellies and long, blood-spattered skirts. Clusters of eight chromed arms uncurled from their backs, slicked to the first knuckles in blood, clicking as they moved. If he could feel it, he was certain his skin would be crawling.
His eyes traced the long, silver line of the spider limbs down to his own flesh, pupils dilating, every artery running cold. They had peeled his chest open, folded the corners of his flesh back like origami, exposing the ribs beneath. The bone had been pried apart, wet and gleaming. They were planting lengths of glistening cable into his chest cavity, his shoulder laid open like a duck at a wedding feast. And as the horror seized hold and shook him side to side, he saw his right arm was missing entirely. Nothing remained but a ragged stump below his shoulder, punctured by translucent tubes and studded with bloody iron clamps.
Hiro fought to struggle in a body that felt nothing at all.
Drew ragged breath to scream.
And woke.
Woke as he did every morning. Sweat in his eyes. Heart rolling and heaving in his chest. Taste of metal on his tongue. And as he looked down at the mutilated nub of flesh where his sword arm should be, studded with bayonet fixtures and snaking iron cables, he sank his head into his hand—his only hand—and let out a shuddering, bone-deep sigh.
A False-Lifer was waiting outside his chambers, ready with the prosthetic cradled in her arms. He felt its weight as she slipped the limb onto its couplings, jacked hungry inputs with gushing feeds, clicking and snapping and tweaking and twisting, finally slipping a thin robe over his sweat-slick flesh. He flexed the arm back and forth; a slow grind of gears and pistons, a sound like chromed spider limbs. He could feel cable pulling beneath his skin. Smell grease.
Pushing open the balcony doors, he stepped out into the scorching sun. The city’s stink rushed inside, underscored with the sharp, wood-smoke tang of burned buildings and dissent. Garish heat licked his skin, a blast-furnace glare forcing his eyes closed. To the south, Tiger ironclads hung limp about the docking spires, forlorn in the poisoned wind. Faint, choking sparrow calls drifted in the gardens; pitiful wretches flitting about on clipped wings, staring mournfully at the red sky above.
He could feel it moving behind his back; the machine set in motion by the Guild and the ministers intelligent enough to have backed him from the outset. The machine of politics, grinding just beneath the palace’s skin. The promises of promotion or coin, the thugs and assassins dispatched to deal with those who could not be bought. Like the clockwork hanging from his right shoulder, smooth and unfeeling. All of this. This estate. This city. This clan.
Soon.
Hiro smiled bitterly. Shook his head. Finding no comfort.
Mine.
“Shateigashira Kensai, exalted Second Bloom of Chapterhouse Kigen!”
Matsu’s voice tore Hiro from his brooding. The servant stood behind him, bowing low, shaved head gleaming.
Heavy steps. The hiss of exhaust. Cloying chi-scent. Hiro glanced over his shoulder at the Shateigashira’s approach; extravagant polished brass, the beautiful, frozen face of a boy in his prime, black cable flooding from his lips. Kensai joined him on the balcony, floorboards groaning in protest.