“You deserve this.”
Wide eyes clouded with unspent tears, lips trembling like leaves in the autumn wind. A fragile, tiny whisper.
“What?”
“You deserve this, my Lady.” Hiro stared at her, pitiless and unblinking. “You betrayed your brother and sovereign Lord. The Shōgun of these islands, the man to whom all owed allegiance. You helped that Kitsune whore escape with Yoritomo’s prize. And because of you, he is dead, the country in chaos, and this clan in tatters.”
“Not you too?” she breathed. “Gods … have mercy upon me…”
“But they have, my Lady. They are far more merciful than I. They have given you the opportunity to atone. To alleviate the shame you have heaped upon yourself with your betrayal.”
“What are—”
“You and I are to be married.”
What little color remained in Aisha’s cheeks faded away, blood draining from her skin as if someone had cut her throat.
“The announcement has already been made,” Hiro said. “Clanlords of the Phoenix and Dragon have accepted invitation. We will be husband and wife by month’s end. And together, we will reforge the Kazumitsu Dynasty, restore the line you helped destroy.”
Hiro took Aisha’s hand, iron fingers closing around her own. The movements were clumsy, gears hissing and whirring like a Lotusman’s skin.
“So now I see.” Defiance burned in Aisha’s stare. Refusal to flinch from his touch. “Shōgun Hiro, is it?”
“You always were an insightful one, Lady.”
“So the Guild have bought you.” Her voice grew stronger, underscored with anger and faint contempt. She glanced at Hiro’s metal arm, lips curling in disgust. “Paid for and sold.”
“Do not dare pass judgment on me,” he growled. “Everything I do now, I do to right the wrongs you helped perpetrate.”
“Wrongs?” Half laughing, half sobbing. “You speak to me of wrongs?”
“He was your brother, Aisha. You were honor-bound to—”
“Do not speak to me of honor,” she snapped. “Your rhetoric about Bushido and sacrifice. Just look outside the window, Hiro-san. Look what this empire has done to the island we live on. Skies red as blood, earth black as pitch. Our addiction to chi draining the land of every drop of life. We wage war overseas, murdering gaijin by the thousands, and for what? More land. More fuel. Where will it end? When the deadlands split wide and drag us all down into the hells?”
“It will end when she is dead,” he spat.
“Ah.” Aisha looked at him with something akin to sympathy. “Now I see. It is not my betrayal that cuts you. It is hers. Yukiko.”
Hiro’s metal hand snapped into a fist. “Do not speak that name in my presence again.”
“She loved you, Hiro-san.”
“Shut up!” Iron fingers twitched.
“And still you failed. Even after you tore her heart from her chest, betrayed the girl who loved you true … still you failed to save your Lord’s life.”
Hiro leapt onto the bed, metal hand closing about Aisha’s throat. Her eyes bulged wide, color blooming in her cheeks as iron bit into her skin. The puppy barked, growling as he sank his fangs into the Daimyo’s robe and tugged. Hiro’s face was a madman’s mask, eyes wild, lips flecked with spittle, teeth gritted. He pressed down with all his weight, watching her face flush with blood.
“Shut your mouth, you honorless whore.”
Aisha’s voice was a strangled whisper, tears welling in her eyes.
“I … pity you…”
Hiro drew his face close to hers, twisted with hatred, staring into her eyes, watching their light fade as the moments ticked by into minutes. But as the end drew near, instead of terror and pain, he saw triumph, gloating and awful as she teetered upon the precipice. She did not struggle. Did not flail or kick or slap at his crushing grip. And with a moan of horror he seized hold of the prosthetic with his other hand and tore it away from her throat.
Aisha collapsed, gasping, her mountain of pillows scattered, thick drifts of hair tangled about her face, like a child’s plaything thrown into a corner when it was no longer wanted. The pup licked her fingers, whining. Hiro shrank from the ruin of the bed and staggered to his feet, gasping for breath.
“Very clever, my Lady.” He wiped sweat from his lips on the back of his real hand. “The men always spoke of how you played us like a shamisen. But not today.” He swallowed, shook his head. “You do not die today.”
Regaining his breath, he knelt by the bed, rearranged the pillows, straightened the bedclothes. And with trembling iron fingers, he brushed the stray hair away from her face.
“No escape,” he sighed, caressing the new bruises along her jaw. “For either of us. You will be my bride. The line of Kazumitsu will live on through us. At least long enough to see that bitch buried in an unmarked grave. After that, I don’t care what—”
She spit at him, then. A glistening spray, right into his face. He closed his eyes and flinched, lips drawing back from his teeth.
“You bastard coward,” she breathed.
Hiro grabbed a handful of her long, black hair, used it to wipe the spit from his eye and cheek. He coiled it in his fist, pulled her head back as she hissed in pain.
“I will leave you now, love.” He planted a gentle kiss on her brow. “Think well of me until I return.”
She glared at him, boiling hatred unmasked in her eyes. He stood and straightened his kimono, the swords at his waist, marched to the rice-paper doors. Sliding them apart, he turned to look at her one last time.
“Consider your position carefully, my Lady. Consider the people you hold dear. The maidservants who even now languish in their cells, awaiting judgment for their complicity in your betrayal.”
“Leave them alone,” she hissed. “They knew nothing of this.”
“So you say. But consider your life is not the only one at stake here. And consider there are far worse fates than death.”
“To live as you do, you mean?” she said. “On your knees? A Guildsman’s slave?”
“It is honor that bids me kneel, Lady. Honor to my oaths. My fallen Lord.” Contempt curling his lips. “A concept you would have no understanding of.”
“Honor,” she spat. “If you had any notion of it, you would have already committed seppuku, Hiro-san. Bad enough you allowed your Lord to perish. But for a member of the Kazumitsu Elite to live on while his Shōgun lies slain…”
She glared with narrowed, hate-filled eyes.
“You are a disgrace, boy.”
The ghost of a smile graced Hiro’s lips.
As empty as the jade-green eyes that rose to meet her own.
“As I said,” he nodded. “You always were an insightful one…”
14
INTOXICATION
Nothing.
Not a godsdamned thing.
They sat together at the tip of a black spur, dropping away into a raging sea. Buruu curled up, chin pressed to stone, a barrier of fur and feathers against the howling wind. Yukiko huddled against him, almost drunk on his warmth, the rhythm of his pulse entwined with her own as she pored over her grim prize, line by painstaking line.
Bishamon’s scroll was not, as she’d hoped, a work concerned with the Kenning’s mysteries. Rather, it was a compilation of mythologies concerning Stormdancers and their mystical bonds to the thunder tigers they rode. Though Yukiko had never really considered it in the past, it made sense that every Stormdancer in Shima’s history was possessed of her gift—how else would they bond with the arashitora they rode into battle? The scroll contained accounts of Kitsune no Akira’s battle against the Dragon of Forgetting. Kazuhiko the Red’s triumph over the One Hundred Ronin. An incomplete account of Tora Takehiko’s heroic charge into the Devil Gate (she presumed the rest of the legends were inked on some other part of Brother Bishamon’s body). But as to clues about how to control the power, or even accounts of it surging beyond control, there was no mention.