“Then come break hers.”
“Don’t you touch her!” Yoshi roared, struggling against the pig-man’s wristlock, spit flying between clenched teeth. “Stay away from her or I’ll kill you!”
The pig-man leaned close. Saké and sweat, damp breath on Yoshi’s ear.
“Told you I’d see you soon, friend.”
Hana cried out as her arm was twisted up higher behind her back. The blood-soaked man was fumbling with her hakama, trying to tear them off. She heard footsteps, heavy breathing of the second man entering the bedroom.
“Help me get her clothes off,” the bloody man hissed.
“The Gentleman wants them alive.”
“She’ll be alive.” A sharp smile; all teeth, no eyes. “She’ll just have trouble sitting for a while.”
“Who the hells are you people?” Hana cried.
She received another punch to the face in reply, stars bursting and spinning in her vision.
“Hold her down!”
“You want me to hold her down with a broken wrist?”
“Hurry up in there!” the pig-man roared.
“Get away from her!” Yoshi gasped, stretched toward the iron-thrower. “You bastards, I’ll kill you all!”
“Going to make you listen, friend,” the pig-man purred. “Make you watch everything we do to her. Cut off your eyelids so you can’t look away. It’s going to make what we did to your sweetheart look like a holy day…”
Hana’s screams were muffled in her pillow.
“No!” Yoshi roared.
“Listen, boy,” the pig-man hissed. “Listen to her sing—”
A shape dropped in through the broken window, a blur of smoke-gray and scars and piss-yellow glittering like broken glass. It landed on the pig-man’s shoulder, dug in with claws like katana. The man howled and reared back, flailing at the dervish of razors and dirty teeth. A paw brushed the surface of his eye, quicker than poison, so fast he didn’t even feel the blow until something warm and gelatinous spilled down his cheek. He screamed then; a trembling, furious wail, clutching the bloody socket as he rolled away, tore the shape off his shoulder in a shower of blood and hurled it across the room.
It thudded into the wall, tumbled down and landed perfectly on its feet.
“Mreowwwwwl,” it said.
Pig-man lurched to his feet, blood spilling between his fingers, snarling with pain.
“My fucking eye—”
The shot popped his skull like a balloon full of red water, rocked what was left of his head back on his shoulders as it rang deafening in the room. Yoshi was already on his way to the bedroom as the man’s body hit the floor, shattered skull cracking against polished boards, feet kicking as if he were swimming across the wood. A thin finger of smoke drifted from the hole in the back of his head.
Yoshi shot the broken-wrist man in the face as he rushed from the bedroom, iron-thrower bucking in his hand. The man crumpled like wax tossed into a fire. Stepping into the bedroom, Yoshi leveled the smoking weapon at the last intruder’s head. The man stood and backed away, tried to simultaneously cover his face and put his hands into the air. Knees pressed together, hunched over, pleading eyes shining through splayed fingers.
“Don’t,” he begged. “Don’t…”
Hana rose from the ruins of the bed, cheek purpling, hair tangled about her eye, leather patch askew on her face. Half breathing, half sobbing, she limped to her brother’s side, holding her wrist, already bruised. Reaching out, she gently covered the barrel, pressed Yoshi’s aim to the floor. He frowned at her as she took the ’thrower from his hands.
“Oh, thank you, girl,” the man said. “Amaterasu bless you—”
Hana turned and fired into the man’s crotch.
He dropped like a stone, screaming, clutching the bloody hole between his legs. Falling forward onto his face, he curled into a ball and screamed again; a high-pitched, vibrato wail that tore his throat raw. Hana kicked him onto his back, planted her foot on his chest and aimed the iron-thrower at his forehead. Daken prowled into the room, coiled around her leg. Her voice was a low-pitched growl.
“Who are you?”
“Gendo,” the man gasped. “Gendo!”
“I didn’t ask your name!” Hana yelled. “I asked who you were!”
“Scorpion Child.” The man pulled his uwagi off his shoulder, showed the dueling scorpions in the negative space between his tattoos. “Scorpion Chiiiiiild…”
“Yakuza?” Hana blinked. “I don’t—”
Yoshi pushed past her, knelt beside the man and grabbed a fistful of collar, hauling him up into a clenched fist. Skin mashed against teeth, bright red paint on the gangster’s mouth.
“How did you find us, bastard?” Yoshi spat.
And then Hana understood. Before he took another breath. Before another word escaped his lips. The piles of money, the late-night forays into the city, the wound on Yoshi’s ribs …
“Gods, Yoshi … You clipped the fucking yakuza?”
Yoshi punched the man again, grabbed a handful of bloody crotch and squeezed.
“How did you find us?” Yoshi roared.
And Gendo told them.
Jurou’s corpse was easier to look at than Yoshi’s grief.
Tiny, bloody footprints and the bodies of poisoned rats on the cobbles all around it, shadows dancing in the light of Docktown flames. The earth trembled beneath them, an explosion lighting southern skies. Hana stared at the body and felt her stomach turn, the urge to look away almost overpowering. The pallor of its skin. The missing toes and fingers and teeth.
“Oh, gods,” she breathed. “Jurou…”
Yoshi fell to his knees, hands over his mouth. Shapeless, gibbering grief spilled between his fingers, rocking back and forth, knees grinding into bloody dirt, tearing his hair and screwing his eyes shut. Spit and snot, gritted teeth and choking sobs, hands clenched into fists.
“Bastards.” He hugged himself and moaned. “Oh, you motherfuckers…”
“Yoshi, we have to go.”
“Hana, look what they did to him…”
“I know.” She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, heart aching. “But there are bushi’ everywhere and the yakuza are still after us. We have to go.”
… scorpion men …
“Yoshi, get up!”
… coming …
Hana hauled him to his feet, turned him away from Jurou’s remains. She heard shouts, running feet getting closer. She glimpsed vicious, dark faces at one end of the alley. Sky-ships roaring overhead. She grabbed Yoshi’s arm and ran.
Which way?
… down run down crowd noise hide …
She dragged her brother away, and he stumbled for the tears in his eyes and the weight in his chest. They tumbled from the alleyway into a blur of noise and color and motion. A crowd flooded the street, bright silks and expensive breathers, possessions bundled in their arms; the well-to-do citizenry of Upside fleeing toward the palace like rats from the flames. Smoke thick in the air, sky-ships thundering, loudspeakers demanding all citizens return to their homes.
They lunged into the mob, tried to blend into the rolling sea of grime and color. A motor-rickshaw sat in the middle of the street, blaring its horn. The driver finally broke, planted his foot, running down pedestrians in his hurry to escape.
Hana looked around at the mob, swelling and shifting about her. She could hear fighting down the way; truncheons and tetsubo and breaking glass. They were swept up in the current of flesh, Yoshi moving along in mute acquiescence, Hana’s arms wrapped around him.
Daken’s voice sang in her mind, tinged with mild anxiety.
… behind you scorpion men have seen you …