Steel Crow Saga Read online

  Next to her, Beaky fell in line, his feathers bristling and wings twitching. His irritation was separate from Tala’s own, but feeling his had a way of stoking hers, which stoked his in turn. Beaky liked to be in places where he could stretch his wings. This cramped, dark hold was no place for a bird like him.

  “Ah, so it’s to be the silent treatment today, then,” the Iron Prince continued. “Well, perhaps I can just chalk today up as a loss.” She heard him moving around in his cell, though she couldn’t see what he was doing. “After all, once we land, we’ll still have a three-day drive down to Hagane. Plenty of time for opportunities to catch you when you’re feeling more talkative.”

  Tala fixed her gaze straight ahead, counting the number of bamboo planks it took to form the side of a crate.

  “You know, I’ve been asking the captain about you. Every other soldier always brings some fresh digs at my appearance, or long speeches about why we lost, or a list of relatives they want me to un-kill. But you’re the only one who’s barely said anything to me.”

  Tala cursed as his words made her lose count. She started over again: Two, three, four…

  “Forgive me for being self-absorbed, but I find that odd. I mean, here I am: the demonspawn of Tomoda, locked in a cell where you can say whatever you like to me without consequences. Whatever grudges you’re dragging behind you, now would be the ideal time to unload them on me. You could really let me have it. And yet, shift after shift, watch after watch…you don’t.”

  Tala gritted her teeth. Her shift was four hours. Why couldn’t she have gotten a watch where he just slept the whole time?

  “Captain Maki tells me you fought like a demon in the rebellion, but it was in ravaging my homeland where you really distinguished yourself.” A rhythmic thunk-thunk-thunk told her he was dragging his fingers across his cell’s bars. “You stormed the beaches at Katagawa, watered the trees at Dokoshima with Tomodanese blood, and put the torch to Hagane’s beautiful spires? The people of Tomoda will be having nightmares about you for a generation. You and your slave.”

  A shudder of rage went through Tala’s entire body at that last word. It was a common enough slur among the Tomodanese, but it always landed extra hard when lashed across Tala’s back.

  Her body language had betrayed her, because the prince said, “You object to the term, then? Apologies. What term would you prefer to describe a creature whose will has been overwritten by yours?”

  Her grip tightened on her rifle, but by now she had enough self-control to say nothing. Beaky’s feathers ruffled, and he loosed a low, annoyed croak.

  “That bird was a crow, wasn’t it?” the prince said. “Or was he a raven? I can never tell the difference. But they’re both remarkably intelligent birds, did you know that? Their minds and emotions are supposed to be nearly as complex as a human’s. I’m sure your bird could’ve outwitted most of the hangers-on in my mother’s court. How many years have you spent smothering its will, hm? How long have you been turning its wings and beak and claws against those who were fighting for its freedom?”

  A burning spike of rage drove itself through the back of Tala’s head. With deliberate, dangerous slowness, she turned around. Beaky croaked, then hopped over to a nearby crate and perched himself atop it. “You monsters never fought for any freedom but your own,” she spat. “And the fact that we’re giving you yours is a gift you don’t deserve.”

  A sly, easy smile sauntered onto the Iron Prince’s face when he saw he’d finally provoked a reaction from her. “You look downright homicidal. Though I suppose that’s all part of the job, eh, Sarge?”

  She took a step forward. “You don’t get to call me that.”

  That sly smile stretched wider. “You hated me and my people enough to drag yourself from one battlefield to another, each one its own kind of hell. You survived them all, and I’ve no doubt you and your slave personally ensured that countless countrymen of mine didn’t. Who did you lose? Who did you watch throw themselves into the teeth of this war you started to defend so vile a practice? An old comrade from your jungle-running days? A handsome lover from the tiny village you want to return to and rebuild someday? A sad little orphan who—”

  “Everyone,” Tala snarled with such ferocity that the prince staggered back a step. “My mother. My father. My…my brother.” Their faces flitted before her eyes again, though none lingered so long as Dimangan’s. It was his old face. The one she wanted to remember.

  “Everyone I’ve ever cared about,” she went on. “None of them had ever raised so much as a fist against Tomoda, and you killed them anyway. You want to call us savages? We were doing what we needed to do to survive you.”

  For a second, the prince seemed taken aback by her fury. But then he smirked again. “So you lost your family,” he said, singsong. “I couldn’t possibly know what that’s like.”

  Tala felt her face twist into something ugly. How dare he compare himself to her? His losses to hers?

  The prince seemed determined to try anyway. “Do you know what your people did to my sister when she landed on Lisan to rescue me from my captivity?” he said. “Or what the Shang would’ve done to my father, if he hadn’t taken his own life when they surrounded him? And my mother, may she reign ten thousand years? Divine vessel of the spirits, beating heart of our people? The report I was given said she’d been in the imperial garden, overseeing the safe evacuation of the palace staff, when a pack of slaves tore her to shreds, then lapped her blood off the floor.” He pressed himself up against the bars. “But please, tell me how horrible and trying this war’s been on—ah!”

  Beaky surged forward in a puff of feathers. His beak snapped shut just where the prince’s finger had been a moment before. Sputtering, the prince staggered back and fell onto his cot. “Restrain that thing at once!”

  Tala leaned on her rifle. “According to the only person in the republic who doesn’t want you dead, you’re needed alive so you can ascend to your throne and negotiate in the peace talks, Your Brilliance,” she said. “I’ve seen a woman clear out a redoubt full of steelhounds with one leg, no shade, and an empty gun. If she can do that, you can run a country with nine fingers.”

  His jaw worked up and down furiously, but nothing resembling coherent language came out—just choked, angry noises. It stoked something viciously satisfying in the back of Tala’s head.

  She turned back around. “Get some sleep, Your Brilliance. We’ll make landfall by—”

  The entire ship shuddered. She leaned heavier on her rifle to stop herself from falling, then frowned up at the upper deck. “What the hell was—?”

  The ship shuddered again, as if it’d run aground. This impact was far worse; Tala only just managed to stay on her feet.

  “What is it?” the prince said, glancing around as if he’d see the source of their troubles lurking just behind a crate. “We’ve been found out. They’re finally coming for me. Who is it? Dahal? Shang? Traitors in your own ranks?”

  “Shut it,” Tala snapped, and to her surprise the prince complied. Still, that was where her mind had leapt, too. A grand fleet had left Lisan City, purportedly escorting Prince Jimuro home. General Erega was on the same ship, but she’d been confident that her presence alone wouldn’t be enough to forestall any assassination attempts. So she’d sent the prince on a small, fast ship sailing to the far north of Tomoda, to travel south overland and arrive just in time for the peace summit to begin. No one was supposed to know this ship even existed.

  A familiar, uncomfortable feeling stirred in the back of Tala’s head. She shook it off. Now wasn’t the time to get bogged down in the past.

  “If there’s an attack,” the Iron Prince said, “I need to get out of this cell.” All his former haughtiness was gone. “The whole point of this voyage is to return me home safely. I can’t do that if I’m locked in a tiny room aboard a sinking ship.”

  But
they weren’t sinking, Tala noted. They’d taken no torpedo fire, and she couldn’t smell burning timber. In fact, besides those initial two impacts, she hadn’t detected any signs that something was amiss.

  “Wait here,” she said, then made for the staircase.

  “Wait!” the prince called after her. “You can’t just leave me!”

  Tala kept walking.

  “I could die in here!”

  Tala kept walking.

  “I recognize that probably sounds enticing, but I must insist—!”

  She broke into a run.

  At the top of the stairs, she saw crew hurrying toward her. In their midst, Maki rattled off orders, his fingers brown blurs as they drummed on his machete hilt.

  She hailed him from the landing. “Sir! Report.”

  “Don’t know anything yet,” the captain said. “One of my boys had his shade do a flyby within the hour, and he didn’t report any ships. No way anyone could sneak up on us in open water. How’s his nibs?”

  “Same as before.”

  Maki smirked ruefully. “I’ve—”

  A shout came from above. Something heavy hitting the deck, perhaps a shade.

  And then: gunshots. Lots of them.

  Her eyes and Maki’s met.

  “Get back down there,” he hissed. In a smooth, practiced motion, he drew his machete from its sheath. “We have to keep that ungrateful royal shit safe, or we went to all this trouble for nothing.”

  As he surged topside, Tala lingered for a long moment on the stairwell. If her troops were going into battle, she should be there to lead them.

  Reluctantly, she hurled herself back down the stairs, leaping them five at a time.

  “We’re under attack!” the prince shouted as soon as he saw her.

  Beaky cawed in annoyance.

  “Save it,” she said to her shade. “The bastard’s right.”

  “Do you know who it is?” the prince said.

  Tala didn’t answer him, but she frowned and worked the bolt on her rifle, so a round chambered itself. Until Dahal had begun funding Sanbu’s jungle-runners, ammunition had been precious and expensive. The rebels had survived on superior marksmanship, and Tala had worked hard to make sure she was a good enough shot that every single bullet she spent would end a Tomodanese life. Anything unfriendly that walked through the door would get one right between the eyes.

  But the next person to enter the hold didn’t come through the door.

  A shadow covered the open loading hatch—and then a green-uniformed figure careened through, screaming as loud as his lungs would let him until he was cut short by a hard landing and the snap of bones. It was Private Radnan, bloodied and mangled, his normally sleepy face contorted with pain and terror.

  “Private!” She rushed to his side and took a knee. His limbs were bent at the wrong angles, and blood poured out of too many wounds for her to patch. Private Radnan, as fierce a fighter as the 13-52-2 had ever known, was not long for this world. “Report,” she said quietly. If she knew who’d done this to him, at least she could make sure his death wasn’t in vain.

  The fall had taken the wind out of him, but he managed to rasp out: “Shades.”

  “Shades?” the prince shouted from his cell. “Did he say, ‘Shades’?”

  “Shut it!” Tala snarled. But even her hatred for the Iron Prince’s voice couldn’t bring any fire to her chilled blood. Only two countries used shadepacting. One was Shang, a fellow victim of Tomoda’s greed that had risen up alongside the Sanbu Islands. And the other was…well.

  Gingerly, she cradled Private Radnan’s head. “Stay with me,” she said, stroking his bloody cheek. “Who sent the shades? Was it Shang? Or have we been betrayed?”

  Radnan squeezed his eyes shut against whatever pain he was feeling. But he shook his head in an unmistakable no.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?” Tala said, fighting to keep calm. “Who’s attacking us, Shang or Sanbu?”

  Again, Radnan shook his head.

  She gritted her teeth. The question was no good when his head wasn’t straight. She shifted tactics. “How many hostiles?” she said. A person could only have a single shade. Counting the number of shades on the side of a battle was a good way to get an estimate of enemy strength.

  Radnan’s ruined fingers flexed themselves to flash the number ten, and then again: twenty.

  And then again: thirty.

  Tala’s eyes went wide. “Shades take me,” she muttered. Beaky cawed in alarm.

  “What?” the prince chimed in. “What is it?”

  Tala ignored him. “Okay, good, Private,” she said. She could feel him slipping away. She had to work fast here. “So, thirty enemy shades. At least that many soldiers then, too?”

  But Radnan shook his head again, horrified.

  “What?” Tala said. “More?” The Marlin’s deck wasn’t that large. There was no way it could hold that many enemy combatants and their shades.

  Yet again, Radnan shook his head. Slowly, looking at his own hand like it horrified him, he held up a single finger. And with the meager breath he had left, he forced a single word between his lips:

  “Splintersoul.”

  Tala’s skin prickled. She recoiled from her own dying marine. “What did you just—?”

  The prince banged on his cell bars. “What does that mean? What does that finger gesture signify to you people? Sergeant, my life could be in danger. As Iron Prince of Tomoda, I hereby order you to answer me, right this instant!”

  Tala didn’t look at him. She reserved her gaze for the dying man before her. “It means ‘one,’ ” she said quietly as a chill ran through her. “He’s saying all these shades are coming from one person.”

  For a long stretch of seconds, there was only silence between Xiulan and Lee.

  Lee slouched back in her seat, arms folded. Typical royals. When they wanted something from you, they promised you the moon. But ask them for so much as a pebble to show some good faith, and they’d hem and haw.

  Then, with slow thoughtfulness, Xiulan said, “Yes, I suppose you should have a shade.”

  Lee measured her with a long, appraising stare. “Not the answer I expected.”

  “Why not?” Xiulan said, with a puff of her pipe. Lee could practically hear the wheels turning in her head. “What better way to symbolize the sincerity of my desire to grant the people of Jeongson greater autonomy than to allow one of their number rights and privileges previously denied her? And when your shade proves invaluable in the apprehension of Iron Prince Jimuro, I’ll be able to hold you up as proof of what we can achieve when we empower and enfranchise.”

  Lee weighed her words for a moment. “That’s a long walk to ‘yes,’ ” she said eventually.

  “I rather like long walks. Don’t you?”

  “If they get me where I’m going.”

  Coyly, Xiulan cocked her head. “And where do you imagine you’re going now?”

  Lee leaned back in her seat, her lips stretching into a wolfish smile. “Depends on where you’re taking me.”

  Xiulan put her pipe back to her lips and puffed a ring up at the ceiling of their car as it rumbled toward Jungshao.

  * * *

  —

  Lee had spent most of her life bouncing around Shang. She’d done stretches in the countryside here and there, but for the most part she’d stuck to the big cities. Out in the country, the Shang paid her too much attention, their long stares and muttered words inescapable, but city folk generally just treated her with apathy.

  Of all the cities she’d been to, though, Jungshao was far from her favorite. She probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it if she hadn’t been on Lefty’s trail. The surrounding fields were good for raising sheep, which meant the place always stank like a dead saint’s armpit. It had been a wool-and-mutton t
own once, but when Tomoda arrived they had imprisoned all the people and liberated all the sheep. They’d refitted the mills for cotton instead of wool, and then gotten to planting. Now that it was back in Shang hands, Jungshao had brought wool back into production, and the smell of sheep shit had clogged Lee’s nostrils from the moment she’d gotten within ten miles of the place.

  When Lee wrinkled her nose at the smell, though, Xiulan just beamed. “That’s the smell of civilization.”

  Lee shook her head. “Not a great endorsement of civilization.”

  It felt strange, riding into the city like some kind of highborn. The first time she had entered Jungshao’s city limits, she stowed away in a train car like a hobo, looking over her shoulder the whole way. Once she’d realized what Lefty had gotten himself into, she’d had to ratchet up her paranoia just to stay alive. Now there was no magistrate snapping at her heels. For once in her life, she told herself as she stepped out of the car, she could just enjoy a place for what it was.

  And yet the stench of sheep hit her all the harder. For a given value of “enjoy,” she thought.

  “If it’s a pacting animal we’re after, what’re we doing here?” Lee said. “We just came from the closest thing Jungshao has to a zoo these days.” In the old days, she’d heard the Shang had kept zoos in every big city, so their citizens could marvel at all the beasts from faraway lands. But of course, Tomoda had marched in, broken open every cage, and let the animals run wild and free. The zoos that hadn’t been burned and built over still lay abandoned in the wake of the Peony Revolution, waiting to be refilled.

  “Ah, but I contend you will seldom find the most interesting or useful partners in a zoo,” said Xiulan. “You underestimate the value of more commonplace creatures.”

  “Right,” Lee said. “How about I choose you, then?”