The “Floating Palace” they called it. The largest sky-ship ever built. Three hundred feet of polished wood and towering walls and pyramid rooftops stacked one upon another. Sunflower-yellow flags rippled from its flanks, its inflatables daubed in the same hue, like some vast golden sun burning overhead, spewing a breathtaking plume of exhaust into the already suffocating sky. It was said the Daimyo of the Fushicho clan never set foot on the tortured earth of their homelands anymore. That any pleasure within the Seven Isles could be found in those opulent halls. The fuel it must have taken to keep it afloat—let alone fly it all the way to Kigen—made Michi sick to her stomach. Extravagance and arrogance in equal, nauseating measure.
She looked at the beggar children in the crowd around her, the women and children who didn’t know where their next meal might come from. Fingernails biting her palms.
“Incredible, is it not?” Ichizo said beside her.
“It is, my Lord,” she breathed.
The air about the Floating Palace was swarming with swift corvettes—three-man sky-ships with balloons shaped like arrowheads, a blazing phoenix painted on each. Swooping and rising like long-lost hummingbirds, they danced in the air to the delight of the crowd. As the grand old ships of the Dragon clan docked at Spire Row, and a small contingent of corvettes flew down from the palace above, the sun finally slipped below the edge of the world. The sky exploded with a blinding fireworks display—pinwheels and dragon cannon lighting the dusk, the citizens below applauding the arrival of the Daimyo’s noble guests. Michi’s eyes roamed the retinues, fixing on each clanlord in turn as they alighted from their respective craft.
The Dragon clanlord, Ryu Haruka, was an elderly man, short and wiry, a long goatee and thinning gray locks swept away in a topknot. He was clad in a sapphire-blue kimono and an embossed cuirass. A silver dragon-maw breather was affixed below jet-black eyes, deep as the bloody sea in which dragons once roamed. An elegant woman (Michi assumed a wife) stood beside him, face hidden by an elaborate breather fan. The pair were surrounded by Iron Samurai in ō-yoroi of silver, blue tabards reaching to the filthy ground. Dour stares and iron eyes.
By contrast, the Phoenix retinue was all motion and color. Their two Daimyo walked side by side—tall, beautiful men, painted faces, clad in identical kimono of burnt yellow and gold. Shin and Shou were an oddity amongst Shima’s clanlords—twin brothers choosing to rule jointly rather than squabble over who had been plucked from their mother’s womb first. The pair moved with an eerie synchronicity, neither straying from the other’s side. Their retinue was made up of swaying dancers with eyes shadowed the color of flame, slender men shifting balls of flaming glass between their fingers. Even the armor of their Iron Samurai seemed crafted for beauty first, function second—helms sculpted like phoenix heads, tabards of flame-colored feathers upon their shoulders.
The Herald of the Tiger court, grand old Tanaka, stood amidst the crowd, paunchy and scarlet-clad. His warm welcome spilled from the speakers clustered beneath his tiger-maw breather, announcing each Daimyo in turn. Michi covered her fist and bowed with the rest of the court, eyes to the floor. Obedient. Deferential. Playing the good woman. The loyal subject. Her stare drifted to the chainswords at Ichizo’s waist.
Soon.
Her whisper was meant for her jailer’s ears only.
“Pardon, Lord, but where are Clan Kitsune? Will they be arriving later?”
“Daimyo Kitsune Isamu refused our Lord’s invitation,” Ichizo whispered in reply. “The Fox zaibatsu will not attend the wedding, nor swear allegiance to Shima’s new Shōgun.”
“May I ask why not?”
Ichizo shrugged. “Perhaps Isamu-sama tires of living…”
Drums rang out in the dusk as the luminance of the fireworks died. Michi turned with the rest of the throng, watching as a long convoy of motor-rickshaws trundled down the Palace Way. The vehicles were squat, beetle-shaped, chi lanterns at their snouts setting the smog around them aglow. A dozen Iron Samurai marched in the vanguard, arrayed in golden tabards of the Kazumitsu Elite, bone-white armor spitting plumes of blue-black. A stomping, clomping legion of bushimen followed, naginata at rest on their shoulders, Tiger banners streaming from the hafts.
Looking around the crowd, Michi saw sheer adoration—genuine or contrived, she couldn’t tell. Applause and cheers, the tune of flute and drum and string spilling through the rust-clad speakers of the public address system. As Lord Hiro’s motorcade approached, she saw movement on a rooftop at the corner of her eye, glancing across to see a small clockwork spider crawling from a downspout on silver, needle legs, red eye aglow. Her stare grew wide and she flinched, grasping Ichizo’s arm.
“What in the name of the gods is that?”
Ichizo glanced at the contraption, muttered beneath his breath.
“I beg pardon, my Lord?” Michi said, leaning closer to hear him over the clamor.
“A Guild device.” Ichizo spoke a little clearer, turned his eyes back to Hiro’s approach. “The palace teems with them.”
“What do they do?”
“What they see, the Guild knows.”
“My honorable Daimyo Hiro is content to let the Guild into his bedchambers?”
“Apparently so.”
She watched the device ticking across the rooftop of a crumbling store shed, a windup key spinning upon its back. Glancing around, she saw several others, tiny red lights hiding in the shadows of lean-to warehouses or storm drains, silver limbs rippling.
“The Guild has done much for my cousin,” Ichizo murmured. “Returned the arm that the Impure assassin took away. Given him the power to seize the Four Thrones. But Yoritomo-no-miya’s old guard warned against tying ourselves too closely to the Guild. As time wears on, I wonder if there was wisdom in old men’s voices.” He ran one hand over his neck. “At least the Guild keep their spies in the open, I suppose. Not hidden in shadows.”
She glanced at him, trying to read his features. His voice was low and measured, tinged with metal within his breather, but she swore she caught a hint of emphasis on the word “shadows.”
“Do you think my cousin will make a good Shōgun, Michi-chan?”
Michi blinked, attention sharpening at the question. She looked around—the jubilant crowd, the soldiers just a shouted order away. Maybe this was where it happened: here in public, right on this boardwalk. Where the viper bared its fangs to strike.
“My Lord?”
“Hiro-sama.” Ichizo nodded toward the approaching procession. “Do you think he will make a good ruler?”
“It does not matter what I think.” She turned her eyes to the floor, trying to appear embarrassed. “I am not worthy to judge.”
“But you have made a judgment nevertheless. That is only human. You knew him briefly, when he courted the Kitsune girl. How did he strike you? As a fair man? Balanced?”
“He was Kazumitsu Elite. His honor was impeccable, his conduct above reproach.”
They stood in silence for a long time, listening to the crackling music, the fireworks popping anew, the percussion of the approaching legion. Ichizo was staring at her, but she refused to meet his eyes, to show any kind of strength. If this was a play, she didn’t quite know what to make of it. He spoke again, his voice so low she could barely hear.
“When we were children, Hiro and I would play soldiers. Fighting side by side against the gaijin hordes or demons from the Yomi underworld. It was all either of us wanted to do: defend the throne. Preserve the might of the Shōgunate.” He glanced at the Daimyo of the Dragon and Phoenix clans, their gathered entourages. “But never once, not in all the times we played, did we imagine our enemies would be our own people.”