She kept her face still. Breathing steady. Wondering what shape her end would take. How far she would get before they cut her down …
“Do you have something to tell me, Michi-chan?”
She licked her lips. Just once. Finally met his stare.
“My Lord?”
“I want you to trust me.” He put his hand on her arm as the noise of the crowd swelled. “I want you to know you can tell me anything.”
Of course you do.
“If you hide things from me, I can’t protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“Yourself.”
So here it is. He must suspect something. Perhaps he’d heard her as she stole his keys. Perhaps one of those accursed Guild machines had been spying in her bedroom ceiling or through her window. She was in danger. No One was in danger. Aisha was in danger …
Thoughts of personal peril vanished as Hiro’s motorcade pulled to a creaking stop at the boardwalk’s edge. The final vehicle in the row of motor-rickshaws was a large palanquin on rolling tank tracks, its hull fashioned to resemble a snarling horde of golden tigers. Atop their backs in a massive, ornate love seat were propped the couple of the hour. Lord Tora Hiro was resplendent in his bone-white ō-yoroi armor, face covered by a snarling tiger helm, his clockwork arm held up to the cheering crowd. But it was not the would-be Shōgun of the nation who caught Michi’s attention, held her transfixed, sent a fierce pride swelling in her breast.
Yoritomo-no-miya had discovered his sister’s treachery in the hours before his assassination, and in his rage, had beaten the First Daughter near to death. And yet, here she was. Looking out over her people. Still breathing while her brother’s ashes filled a tomb beneath the palace. Such strength. The strength to defy every impulse within her, to rise up from a place of luxury and privilege and recognize the suffering of the people beyond the palace walls. To strive for something better. The strength to say no.
“Aisha,” Michi whispered.
The First Daughter was a beauty from the pages of poets, a woman wrought of alabaster and fine black silk. Her face powdered pearl-white, deep smears of kohl accentuating knowing eyes. A tiger-maw breather covered the lower half of her face, her hair bound into elaborate braids, pierced with gold. Her gown was scarlet, embroidered with a rippling pattern of lotus blooms and prowling tigers, rising into a high throat and an elaborate choker of gold and jewels. Hiro held her hand, fingers entwined, lifting it to the cheering crowd. Though the boy Daimyo might be a pretender, Kazumitsu’s blood flowed in Aisha’s veins. She was the last remnant of a mighty dynasty, a living link to Shima’s glorious past. The people loved her for it.
She sat poised, immaculate, still as midnight, her eyes roaming her adoring public and twinkling with firecracker light. Her seat was surrounded by Guildsmen of a breed Michi had seldom seen before—wasp-waisted women with long, insectoid limbs made of chrome at their backs. Their eyes glowed red, mechabacii chittering on their chests.
Hiro released his fiancée’s hand, stepped down off the palanquin, surrounded by a sea of his white-clad Iron Samurai. As one, the crowd sank to their knees. The Daimyo of the Phoenix and Dragon stepped forward, bowed low, first to Lady Aisha, then to her betrothed. Hiro covered his fist, returned the bow.
“Noble Daimyo Haruka-san, Shin-san, Shou-san,” Hiro said. “My fiancée, the First Daughter of Kazumitsu, and I bid you welcome to Kigen, and extend our humble thanks for your attendance at our wedding celebrations.”
Haruka gave a gruff nod. Shin spoke then, his voice soft and sweet as fresh plums.
“Daimyo Hiro. Ours hearts are gladdened. We had heard rumor you had gained the support of the Kazumitsu Elite…”
Shou glanced at the Iron Samurai, picking up his brother’s trailing sentence. “… but we could scarce believe it.”
“And why is that, honorable Shou-san?”
“In truth, noble Hiro-san,” Shin replied, “we expected every one of them would have committed seppuku to restore their honor after their Shōgun was slaughtered by a common-born girlchild.”
A sudden hush fell over the crowd, heavy as stone, uneasy murmurs rippling at the periphery. Bushimen glanced at each other in the ringing silence, the click-clack of dozens of mechabacii filling the void. Shateigashira Kensai stepped forward, arms folded, his voice that of a hundred dying lotusflies.
“Shin-san,” the Second Bloom said. “You shame our host. And his bride to be.”
“No disrespect is intended, Second Bloom.” Shou bowed. “Especially to First Daughter.”
“Perhaps we simply do things differently in the west,” Shin said. “If our Elite guard had stood idle as a teenager snuffed us out like candles, there is not a man among them who would not willingly suffer the cross-shaped cut to their bellies…”
Daimyo Haruka drummed his fingers on his chainkatana hilt. “Shin-san…”
“Noble Daimyo Shin is quite correct,” Hiro said, his voice flat and cold.
The twin Daimyo of the Phoenix clan blinked slowly.
“You agree?” Shou asked.
Hiro nodded. “Each of these men, every man who wore the golden jin-haori as Yoritomo was murdered, suffers the stain of unendurable disgrace. As do I. But to restore the honor of the Kazumitsu line, we have chosen to endure the unendurable.”
Hiro reached up and unbuckled the mempō covering his face. As he pulled the mask away, the crowd gasped, stared in openmouthed horror at their Lord. Michi’s hand sought Ichizo’s, clasped it tight.
The Daimyo had painted his face with ashes.
A thick white pall covered his features, clung to his eyelashes, like the face of a corpse before it was assigned to the pyre. He glared at the assembled Daimyo as his Elite removed their helms, revealing faces as white and ash-streaked as their Lord’s. Michi felt a cold fear in her gut at the sacrilege—an instinctive revulsion at the perversion of traditional funeral rites.
“Honorable Daimyo,” Haruka growled. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Of what do you speak, Haruka-san?”
“To paint the faces of living men with ashes is to invite the deepest misfortune,” the Dragon clanlord replied. “This is a practice reserved for corpses. It will bring death’s touch to the ones so marked.”
“But we are dead.”
“… Daimyo?”
“Every samurai in the Kazumitsu Elite has disgraced himself for allowing his Shōgun to perish. As our noble Phoenix cousins have said, we should already have committed seppuku. But first we must turn our blades to the execution of she who laid noble Yoritomo low.”
He stared at the other clanlords, toxic wind whipping hair about his ashen face.
“Therefore, we have consigned our souls to Enma-ō. Burned our offerings of wooden coin and incense to the Judge of all the Hells, begged him to weigh us fairly, and painted our faces with the ashes left behind. As is the way with any dead man.
“We are the Shikabane.” He eyes were dark jade against ashen white. “We are the Corpses.”
Michi watched the clanlords glance at each other, uncertain. Perhaps even fearful. All the pretense of their grand entrances stripped away, left naked before those burning green eyes.
“I wish to be clear upon this.” Hiro’s gaze flickered from one Daimyo to the next. “I will honor our fallen Shōgun. I will marry Lady Aisha, sire a new heir to the Kazumitsu line, see this nation’s future assured. But once this duty is served, I will set about hunting and executing Yoritomo’s assassin and all who abet her. I will serve this nation as Shōgun until the Impure whore, Kitsune Yukiko, is dead.”