Steel Crow Saga Read online

  Steel Crow Saga is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Paul Krueger

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Krueger, Paul, author.

  Title: Steel crow saga / Paul Krueger.

  Description: New York: Del Rey, [2019]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019014522 (print) | LCCN 2019018073 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593128237 (Ebook) | ISBN 9780593128220 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593156773 (international edition)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3611.R843 (ebook) | LCC PS3611.R843 S74 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2019014522

  Ebook ISBN 9780593128237

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Caroline Cunningham, adapted for ebook

  Title and part-title background image: iStock.com/winterbee

  Sigil art by Grace P. Fong

  Cover design: David G. Stevenson and Faceout Studio

  Cover illustration © Chun Lo

  v5.4_r1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue: Dimangan

  Part One: Shade and Steel

  Chapter One: Lee

  Chapter Two: Tala

  Chapter Three: Lee

  Chapter Four: Tala

  Part Two: Splintered Souls

  Chapter Five: Lee

  Chapter Six: Jimuro

  Chapter Seven: Lee

  Chapter Eight: Tala

  Part Three: Singing Cicadas

  Chapter Nine: Xiulan

  Chapter Ten: Tala

  Chapter Eleven: Lee

  Chapter Twelve: Jimuro

  Chapter Thirteen: Xiulan

  Chapter Fourteen: Tala

  Part Four: The Crow’s Flight

  Chapter Fifteen: Jimuro

  Chapter Sixteen: Lee

  Chapter Seventeen: Xiulan

  Chapter Eighteen: Jimuro

  Chapter Nineteen: Xiulan

  Chapter Twenty: Lee

  Chapter Twenty-one: Jimuro

  Chapter Twenty-two: Tala

  Chapter Twenty-three: Jimuro

  Chapter Twenty-four: Tala

  Part Five: Ashes and Embers

  Chapter Twenty-five: Dimangan

  Chapter Twenty-six: Xiulan

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Lee

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Tala

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Jimuro

  Chapter Thirty: Xiulan

  Chapter Thirty-one: Lee

  Part Six: The Brilliant Blade

  Chapter Thirty-two: Tala

  Chapter Thirty-three: Lee

  Chapter Thirty-four: Xiulan

  Chapter Thirty-five: Jimuro

  Chapter Thirty-six: Tala

  Chapter Thirty-seven: Jimuro

  Part Seven: Vengeance in Violet

  Chapter Thirty-eight: Tala

  Chapter Thirty-nine: Xiulan

  Chapter Forty: Dimangan

  Chapter Forty-one: Jimuro

  Chapter Forty-two: Tala

  Part Eight: The Peaceful Path

  Chapter Forty-three: Jimuro

  Chapter Forty-four: Xiulan

  Chapter Forty-five: Lee

  Chapter Forty-six: Tala

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Paul Krueger

  About the Author

  Dimangan heard his name and came when he was called.

  He stood amid a press of people. Like him, they were all Sanbunas: children of the Sanbu Islands, and specifically of the islands’ greatest port, Lisan City. Like him, they boasted beautiful dark-brown skin and hair the blue-black of a raven’s breast. Like him, they wore clothes of light, loose-cut linen to protect from the city’s unrelenting humidity. But unlike him, they were all moving and flashing him irritated looks, while he stood in their midst like a particularly dumb rock in a stream.

  “Mang!” the high, loud voice called again: Tala. Small as she was, he couldn’t quite pick her out in the crowd just yet, but his sister’s voice was unmistakable.

  He blinked and stepped back into the moment. “Sorry,” he said, tipping his cap to the nearest person and sliding past them. They frowned at him as he flashed his scalp, which he’d shaved to fight the summer heat. He ignored them and hustled along. “Sorry, sorry, sorry…”

  He jostled his way through the weekend crowd pouring in and out of the shops on either side of the street. Foot traffic was supposed to be confined to the sidewalks, but the people of Lisan City were notoriously blasé about sidewalks. The occupying Tomodanese troops and the colonial governor, the daito, had tried to crack down on this when automobiles and streetcars had first been introduced to Lisan City’s roads, back when Dimangan was a kid. But even under occupation, Sanbunas were a stubborn people, and eventually the daito had realized some fights just weren’t worth having.

  “Hoy! Mang!” Tala called again, and at last he saw her. His little sister was ten: half a lifetime removed from his own age, and as much a surprise to his parents as she’d been to him. But while she barely came up to his waist, she carried herself with the stiffness and seriousness of a woman thrice her age and size. They shared their mother’s angular face, but Dimangan could already tell she was going to grow up looking more like their father. She had his broad shoulders, his wide nose, his semi-permanent scowl.

  “You’re slow today,” she said, cuffing him on the thigh when he finally caught up to her. “What’s going on with you?”

  That was his dear Lala: inconveniently sharp. “Nothing’s going on with me,” he tried gamely.

  “You’re a shitty liar,” she said. There was no malice to how she said it, but the bluntness still made it sting a little.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any point in trying to get you to mind your language,” Dimangan said, sighing.

  “You’re shitty at changing the subject, too.” She turned to scan the thick crowds. “Every time Ina and Ama send us shopping, you practically skip here. Today it feels like a full team of shades wouldn’t be able to—”

  “Keep your voice down,” Dimangan said, casting a wary glance around. Talking about shadepacting wasn’t exactly outlawed, but actually doing it was, and the Tomodanese weren’t terribly discerning when it came to differentiating suspected treason from the real thing.

  “There aren’t any steelhounds. I already checked,” Tala said, rolling her eyes. “And you’re changing the subject again. Does it have to do with Aijie?”

  Dimangan froze at the mention of the fruit-seller’s son. Like he’d said: inconveniently sharp.

  He sighed. Th
ere was no point in denying it. “I don’t think he’s interested in me the way I’m interested in him.”

  Tala waved his words away. “You have to believe in yourself more, Mang.”

  He looked away from her, faintly embarrassed. “No,” he said carefully. “I mean, I saw him with Liwayway. She was talking with him…very closely.” When Tala frowned up at him, he added: “As in, lip-to-lip.”

  Tala’s eyes widened. Her expression softened a little, and then she reached up: not to cuff him, but to place her hand in his. She looked up at him thoughtfully, and then said: “He could still like boys, you know.”

  Dimangan burst out laughing and tugged her along. “Lala.”

  “It’s true!” She looked a bit peevish now. “You can like both! I know kids at school who like both! They like everyone!”

  “We’re not talking about this now.”

  “I’m just saying, you haven’t even tried…”

  He loved that this was how his little Lala saw the world, that she truly believed getting what you wanted was just a matter of wanting it enough. Soon, Dimangan knew, she would see or experience something that would disabuse her of that notion, probably for good. He and their parents kept her as safe as they could, but with the blue mountain banners of Tomoda flying from every flagpole in the country, a day like that was all but inevitable.

  He was grateful they didn’t end up encountering Aijie as they went from shop to shop, filling up the two baskets Ina and Ama had sent them out with. Their final stop was the butcher’s, where even the stoic Tala came out wincing at the rising price of pork. The Tomodanese, whose culture forbade eating meat, had attempted to outlaw it entirely when they’d completed their conquest of the Sanbu Islands. Steel Lord Kenjiro, a softer man as far as foreign despots went, had ultimately backed down in the face of mass unrest.

  But his daughter, Steel Lord Yoshiko, was not so understanding. Rather than ban it outright, she’d instituted a climbing tax on all meat. Already, people Dimangan knew were whispering about black-market butchers, but Dimangan wasn’t glad of them. Sanbunas deserved to be Sanbunas out in the open. In her weekly radio addresses, the Steel Lord spoke grandly of the civilization Tomoda was bringing to its subjects, but there was nothing civilized about this.

  At the clang of a bell, the thick crowd in the street immediately parted. A black streetcar slithered through the gap left behind: sleek, shiny, with the peaked, gently concave roof that Tomodanese design favored so much. At the front and back of the car were two pairs of conductors, blue-clad Tomodanese with looks of concentration on their faces. They were metalpacting: practicing the Tomodanese art of bonding their souls to pieces of metal via touch. Dimangan wasn’t completely clear on how the practice actually worked, but it was how the Tomodanese could move automobiles and streetcars and warships without engines or fuel. How their guns could fire with unerring accuracy. How their blades could sharpen themselves to absurd keenness. Metalpacting was the teeth with which Tomoda had devoured the world.

  Normally, passengers would embark and disembark from the streetcar. But through its windows, Dimangan saw only soldiers. They all wore the crisp blue uniforms of the Steel Lord’s army, with the narrow silhouettes, high collars, and multiple layers that all made them poorly suited to Sanbu’s humid climate. The color of their jackets only accentuated their pale skin all the more, while their coarse black hair peeked out from beneath their tall blue caps. Tomodanese soldiers weren’t exactly an uncommon sight on the streets of Lisan City these days, but Dimangan drew Tala close to him just the same. In the depths of his gut, something suddenly didn’t feel right.

  At the very front of the car, he saw a pair who were out of uniform. The first was a woman in a flowing blue silk kimono, elaborately patterned with mountaintops. He couldn’t see below her waist, but Dimangan knew that thrust into her kimono’s sash would be the ceremonial sword that marked her as the shoto, trusted right hand to the local daito. That meant Dimangan was looking at Kishitani Yumi, one of the most dangerous and feared individuals in the Tomodanese regime. And at the moment, she appeared to be giving a lecture to an audience of one.

  As she gestured with a voluminous blue sleeve at the city outside her window, Dimangan keyed in on that audience: a young boy, perhaps Tala’s age, who peered curiously out at Lisan City from behind round spectacles. He wore a plain blue kimono, but despite his nondescript dress Dimangan could see deference in Kishitani’s posture as she addressed the boy. Whoever he was, this small boy was a big fish.

  Someone else moved into view: a tall, severe-looking woman in a lighter-blue kimono with jagged patches of white. Dimangan’s eyes widened; that was the uniform of the Kobaruto, the Steel Lord’s personal guard. And that meant the boy sitting by the window was—

  Tala tugged on his arm. She looked concerned, but not afraid. With a decisiveness that would’ve made their parents swell with pride, she whispered, “We should go now.”

  He marshaled his disbelief and nodded, then began to steer her through the crowd and toward the side streets. Home was less than a mile from here, and he was already counting each step.

  But as they pushed through, a cry arose not fifteen feet from where they stood. Women and men with green scarves and bandannas over their faces shoved through the crowd toward the shoto’s streetcar. Dimangan’s eyes widened as he caught sight of one: a woman whose upturned collar had slipped to reveal a bright-red tattoo on the side of her neck.

  No. Not a tattoo, Dimangan realized. A pactmark.

  “Lala—” he said, trying to pull his sister away, but hers wasn’t the only name on the wind.

  “Niyog!” the woman shouted, and a jet of red light issued from her hand. Onlookers threw themselves out of its way as it solidified into a creature that had once been a spotted sunda cat. But shadepacting—the creation of a bond between the souls of human and animal—had forever altered its form. The cat-shade now stood shoulder-height to its human partner. Huge tufts of golden fur erupted like flames from its four ankles, while a fifth flared from the tip of its thrashing tail. It opened a pair of huge, predatory yellow eyes…and then a second pair, just atop the first. Nestled amid the black spots on its long, powerful neck, a red pactmark glowed, identical to its partner’s.

  The other green-clad Sanbunas called the names of their shades, and their partners materialized: a visayan-shade, with antlers that bristled like speartips. A tarsier-shade, whose pacting had made its simian fists as big and spiky as durians. All told, eight had materialized on either side of the streetcar, and with a cacophony of shouts, growls, and roars, they charged for the soldiers that had begun to pour from every entrance.

  The Tomodanese were disciplined fighters. Even caught unawares, they were still quick to fall into formation, shoulder their rifles, and fire. The bullets that hit the shades blew holes in their hides, which immediately crackled with magical energy and patched themselves over. But one lucky shot streaked past the charging shades and caught the woman in her chest. She crumpled to the sidewalk as her cat-shade, Niyog, disappeared in a flash of red light just before it reached the enemy lines.

  The world around Dimangan turned to hell as bystanders screamed and fled, shoving and clawing to get as far away from the fighting as they could. He felt like rice in a mill, or meat in a grinder, as his body was pulled in every direction. With each gunshot that rang out, with every scream that accompanied claws and fangs sinking into flesh, the crowd worked up into a greater frenzy.

  He gripped Tala’s hand tighter and pulled her onward. Whatever happened, he had to get her out of here.

  A pair of hands planted themselves between his shoulders and shoved him straight to the ground. “Lala!” he screamed as her hand tore free from his. As the first boots stepped across his back and squeezed the breath from his body, he saw a jungle of knees and shins swallow his sister whole. He tried to scream out, tried to reach for her, but he had no air, no
strength. His vision swam with panic as he scrambled desperately to get out from under everyone trampling him—

  And then the person just in front of him toppled over as a heavy basket of groceries swung hard into their shins. Tala swung it back the other way, screaming at the top of her lungs, and everyone near her parted, like fish around a shark. She grabbed his hand and yanked as hard as she could. “Get up, get up!” she shouted. “Come on, Mang, get up!”

  His head was fuzzy from slamming into the pavement, but Dimangan forced himself back to his feet. Slouching low to avoid stray bullets, he and Tala sprinted for their lives. And as they ran—she in front, he behind—they never let go of each other again.

  After four blocks, the crowds thinned out enough that they could move with relative freedom and safety. Alarms had gone up all over the neighborhood. No one dared walk in the streets now, as car after car of Tomodanese soldiers sped toward the market square. Dimangan caught the eye of one soldier as her car drove past. She glared down at him with contempt, as if he were no more than a weed she hadn’t gotten around to plucking from her garden just yet. The amount of disdain she was able to muster in her expression was staggering, Dimangan thought as her car shrank into the distance.

  Then he looked down and saw his sister glaring at the car’s taillights with almost the exact same look in her eye.

  He tugged at her hand. “Let’s get home,” he rasped.