“Is he going to die?”
Kaori stood nearby, wretched and trembling. Sodden fringe draped down over her scar, steel-gray eyes bloodshot with rage and grief. To see him go like this …
“He’s not going to die,” Mari said. “Not if I can help it.”
But she couldn’t. And she knew it. Daichi was halfway to the Mountain of Bones already. Blood trickled from his lips with each bubbling gasp, pooling beside his head. Every breath was a labor, thinning by the moment, his blood pressure steadily dropping with each struggling beat of his heart.
The best anyone could pray for was that he passed without pain.
“Where is that lotus?” she shrieked.
She heard a clamor on the verandah outside, angry voices swelling. Kaori looked up, jaw clenched, scowling like Enma-ō himself as Kin walked into the room, drenched to the bone. Following the boy was a tall, slender girl with earth-brown eyes and dark, cropped hair. Her lips were the color of bruised roses, so full it looked as if someone had cuffed her across the mouth. Dressed in a threadbare hakama, bare feet, a dirty uwagi with a hole torn in its back to accommodate the swell of a silver orb, a cluster of chromed, insectoid limbs curled at her back.
A gaggle of onlookers gathered in the doorway, dark stares and darker mutterings.
“Mari, you’ve met Ayane,” said Kin.
“Gods above…” the old woman breathed.
“What is the meaning of this?” Kaori hissed. “How did you get out of your cell?”
“She’s here to help, Kaori,” Kin replied.
The False-Lifer stepped up to the bloody table, eyes sweeping Daichi’s body. She peeled back one of his eyelids with her thumb, pressed two fingers against his throat and leaned close to hear the breath rattling in his lungs. The old man coughed, spattering her face with blood. She stood, turned to Kin and blinked once. Twice.
“His lung has collapsed. He will be dead soon.”
“By all the gods in the heavens, Guildsman, are you insane?” Kaori still glared at Kin, outrage in her eyes. “You seriously believe I would let this accursed freak treat my father?”
“Would you rather he died?” Kin asked.
“This is madness. Are you going to run cables beneath his flesh? Plug him into one of those cursed mechabacii? I’d rather bury you both alongside him.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Kin slammed his hands on the table. “She’s offering to save his life, and you repay her with threats?” Kin glared at the faces peering through the windows. “Aren’t you supposed to be the ones who’ll free this island? You should be better than this!”
Kaori stepped close to Kin, her face inches from his. “If it weren’t for your damnable machines, none of this would have happened!”
“Your people are the reason this happened! The shuriken-throwers were sabotaged, Kaori!”
“You are wasting time.” Ayane’s voice cut through the clamor, soft as silk, sharp as the limbs on her back. “With respect, this man has precious little left. If we do nothing, he is as good as dead. I do not see how allowing me to try can make matters worse.”
Kin ran his hand over his scalp, met Kaori’s stare with defiance.
“What say you, Kaori? Will you trust Ayane, or watch your father die?”
Kaori’s eyes drifted to her father. His struggles had grown feeble, shallow breath sucked ragged through bloody teeth. Fear carved long furrows across her brow, into the corners of her mouth. Clenched fists, clenched jaw, trembling breath. She looked at Ayane, moments ticking by like minutes, like hours, like days until at last Daichi started coughing, coughing, his whole body shaking and shuddering, lips painted with blood. Kaori knelt by her father’s side, clutching his hand. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Can you really save him, girl?”
The chromed arms uncurled from Ayane’s back one pair at a time, like peacock feathers, gleaming in the lantern light. She touched the blood spattered on her face, smearing it between her fingers as if savoring the sensation.
“I can save him.”
Kaori sighed.
Nodded once.
“… Then do it.”
28
MOVING PICTURES
There is power in words.
There are words that bid us laugh and make us weep. Words to begin with and words to end by. Words that seize the hearts in our chests and squeeze them tight, that set the skin on our bones to tingling. Words so beautiful they shape us, forever change us, live inside us for as long as we have breath to speak them. There are forgotten words. Killing words. Great and frightening and terrible words. There are True words.
And then there are pictures.
It was a slow process at first. Sitting opposite one another on the metal cot, Yukiko pushing images into Ilyitch’s mind, waiting for him to form his clumsy replies. His eyes were wide, mouth slack. And though he had no idea how it was all happening, the boy seemed enthralled enough by the process that he didn’t waste time seeking explanations.
Ilyitch’s images were blurry impressions; finger paintings in the rain, running and bleeding at the edges. By comparison, Yukiko’s thoughts were intricate, full of light and color. But they found an equilibrium between them, and she soon found enough meaning in the gaijin’s mental shorthand to understand his intentions. She tried to inject emotion into her thoughts, to make him feel like she was a friend, but had no idea if she was succeeding.
Her nose started bleeding almost as soon as they began, and it took a long time to explain that the blood was nothing to be concerned about, that there were more important things at stake. Her skull was close to splitting, the wall she’d once again built herself trembling with the strain, barely keeping the Kenning’s fire at bay. But something held it in place, stopped it collapsing utterly; something fierce and bright and desperate inside her. Born perhaps of fear for Buruu, lost out there in the dark, or perhaps rage at her own helplessness to save him.
She started by showing Ilyitch an image of Shima’s armies in retreat, packing up and flying home after Yoritomo’s death. She tried to show him the war was over. That she was not an enemy, or at least, not his.
In turn, the young man showed her burned crops and gutted buildings. Gaijin soldiers cut down under white flags, prison camps, wailing children dragged into sky-ships and flown away, never to be seen again.
She showed him Yoritomo, murdered in the Market Square. An empty throne.
Ilyitch replied with the image of a tall woman in a stone chair, grim and terrible. She had blond hair, the same mismatched eyes as Katya—one black, the other glittering rose quartz. She wore a suit of iron, black feathers adorned her shoulders, a huge bird’s skull with a cruel, hooked beak on her head. Twelve stars lay at her feet, and she gathered them in her lap, one by one.
He showed her legions of stern-faced gaijin, skins of great wolves and bears upon their shoulders, naked swords in their hands. A fleet of ships, iron fortresses floating on a storm sea, powered by the lightning they hauled from the sky.
And then Ilyitch showed her an hourglass, its sand almost run out.
So Yukiko turned away from the war and focused on Buruu. She formed pictures of the great hunt on the Thunder Child, their time trapped alone in the Iishi, their captivity in Kigen and the battle with Yoritomo’s samurai in the arena. Ilyitch watched her with something like awe during this passage, jaw slack, running his fingers over the fur at his shoulders.