Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles (33 page)

Toru was still staring at the street, as if carefully recording every pedestrian and vehicle. “When a ship loses its way, the course must be corrected, or it will crash on the rocks.”

“Your story could cause an uprising against the Imperium.”

“So be it.”

He simply couldn’t believe it, and maybe that was why he spoke out of turn. “Such hard hearts, capable of such cruelty, I never thought an Iron Guard would betray his—“

Toru slammed his open palm down on the table. The wood cracked and cups spilled. “I am no traitor!”

Xiang cringed back. Everyone in the café looked their way, curious. The proprietor shuffled out and immediately began cleaning up the spills and apologizing for things that weren’t her fault, but nobody in Shanghai wanted to risk a Nipponese customer’s displeasure, even if they had no idea who he really was. It simply wasn’t worth the risk.

Toru lowered his voice. “Know this. I still believe in the mission of the Imperium. I believe in the teachings of my father. Manchuria. Nanking. Manchuko. Thailand. Indonesia. I would do it
all
again. Every battle. All of it. I would follow my orders because I am a warrior. My honor requires it.”

His sons had all died at the hands of someone like this. He had been tortured for speaking out against their occupiers. Xiang had been beaten down and cowed for so long that he was surprised to hear his own words tumbling out in a rush of sudden, hot anger. “It isn’t the battle. It is the depravity that comes after it. Imperium troops are cruel. They do not limit their killing to soldiers. They burn and rape. They starve villages while extra food rots, simply out of spite. They murder innocents for sport. I saw it with my own eyes. They would practice using their bayonets on defenseless prisoners! They murder children. Children!” Now he knew he’d gone too far. Everyone in the café was staring at them, surprised at Xiang’s outburst. He hadn’t said anything that any of them wouldn’t have said in private, but you didn’t dare say it to someone from the faction that could rain fiery death down upon your city on a whim. He waited for Toru to strike him dead, but he would be damned if he looked away. “Do not try to justify that to me as honor. There is no honor in evil.”

Toru’s public face had slipped. There was anger, and perhaps something else . . .
Shame?
Surprisingly, it was the Iron Guard who broke eye contact first. “Sit down, Xiang.”

He hadn’t realized he was standing. Xiang slowly returned to his seat. Toru was quietly contemplating the street again. Gradually, the other patrons went back to their tea.

I may die today, but I die an honest man.
Regardless of what happened next, Xiang was resigned to his fate. “You were there. You know I speak the truth. You approved of such—”

“I did at first, because I did not understand. I participated in the sport, the same as the rest of the soldiers. I am not proud of my actions, but I will not deny they occurred.” Toru looked at his hands. “It is easy, when you are so powerful, to think of your opponents as less than men . . . animals perhaps. If they are animals, do what you will with them. Use them for your pleasure, throw them away when they are broken and you are done.”

“Disgusting.”

“Perhaps. Some among us took it for granted. It was simply what victors do. Yet . . . it
haunts
me.” Toru’s voice was a whisper, barely audible over the buzz of traffic and the constant hum of thousands of city dwellers. “I came to understand such cruelty was not what the Chairman taught. He was a warrior, ruthless against his enemies, yet he bore no animosity toward former foes. His goal was to improve us all so that we could stand as a better world against our true enemy. Only many of his disciples failed to grasp that part of his vision. When your entire philosophy is based upon the strong taking what they want from the weak, soon the weak mean nothing.”

Xiang could not believe his ears. He did not know an Iron Guard was capable of regret. “You speak of him as if he was merciful, but the Chairman let those things happen.”

For the first time, Toru did not look like a terrifying Iron Guard. He looked like a tired young man. “To entertain such an idea would mean that the Chairman was somehow flawed. This, I cannot accept. He was perfect. We are flawed. I was a warrior who did what he was told. Because of my strength and speed, I was a favorite in the games, and my superiors would often choose me to represent my order in competitions against other units.”

“Games? You mean massacres.”

“To us they were simple contests, feats of strength for the officers to display our prowess with the sword or club . . .” Toru was staring into the distance. “I
never
lost. It was easy when they were not real people. I imagine it is more like chopping firewood, simple manual labor. Then one day, I refused to follow such orders. I forbid this behavior among my troops. This became . . . controversial.”

“Why did you stop?” Xiang was genuinely curious. Terrified, but curious.

“They became
real
.”

Toru paused for a long time. He seemed to be staring at his hands. He curled them into fists, and then hid them under the table.

“I do not wish to speak of it further. After this incident I was disgraced and sent to America, as far from the front as possible. I had been trained since birth to serve and to fight. To be sent away from the war was an incredible dishonor, but I understand now that it was meant to be . . . I do not know why I tell you these things, old man.”

“You are a murderer, trying to scrub his conscience clean. If these things you told me are true, then you know you will more than likely be dead soon. You cannot expect to challenge the Imperium so directly and survive. I have interviewed murderers before, hours before their executions, and you sound like one of the condemned. I am speaking to a man who knows he is going to the gallows. You seek something that can never be given, Iron Guard Toru. I will never forgive you.
We
will never forgive you.”

Toru rubbed his face with both hands, and when he lowered them, his public mask was firmly back in place. Toru stood and adjusted his coat. “I do not expect your forgiveness. I merely expect you to tell the truth.” He began walking away.

“My telling the truth is why you people had my sons killed.”

There was a small stutter in Toru’s step. He turned back. “If I could change the Imperium’s past, I would.”

“Liar.”

Toru gave him a small, sad smile. “Witness my conviction.” And then the Iron Guard walked quickly through the dining area and disappeared into the crowded street.

Xiang stayed there, trembling, the fear and anger slowly bleeding from him. Now that the murderous Toru was gone, the painful knots in his bowels began untwisting. He glanced at his notepad, filled with tales of devouring creatures from beyond the stars, ghosts, and impossible conspiracies. The Iron Guard had simply gone mad. The horrors of war had broken his mind.
Witness my conviction.
What had Toru meant by that? And then Xiang realized that in all of their discussion he’d forgotten the reason Toru had said had brought him here to begin with.

The unassuming building that supposedly housed
Tokubetsu Koto Keisatsu
agents was busy now, men hurrying in and out because it was lunch time. He caught a brief glimpse of Toru crossing the busy street, dodging between the cars, which were going far too fast. One of them honked, but Toru did not heed it. He walked quickly up behind a group of three men who had just come down the steps. Toru’s manner was unassuming, his hat down to keep from being recognized as he shouldered his way through the bystanders.
What is he doing?
Though he’d said he’d come to deliver a message, he did not hail the men, and they did not see him coming.

Toru grabbed the first by the back of his coat, lifted him effortlessly, and hurled him into the street, directly into the path of a speeding truck. He hit the grill so hard that pieces went spinning off. The truck driver slammed on the brakes. Tires locked up and screeched, but the forward momentum was too much, and Xiang lost track of Toru for a second behind the truck. Then the truck was past, leaving a smear of blood behind, and Toru was twisting the last man’s head
off
. The other was already lying in a broken heap. The Iron Guard dropped the head, took one big step, leapt up all of the stairs, crashed through the heavy wooden doors of the building, and disappeared inside.

There was much commotion on the street. People were shouting and pointing, but since it had happened so very fast, Xiang doubted any of them really knew what had just transpired. Two seconds later there was a gunshot. Five seconds after that, a window on the second floor of the purported secret-police building exploded outward in a gout of fire and broken glass. Now the crowd knew something was wrong. The Shanghaiese were no strangers to sudden street violence, so they began taking cover or moving away in a fashion which would seem rather casual to most visitors.

There were more muffled gunshots, and though Xiang knew it was surely impossible from here with all of the city noise, he could have sworn that he heard screaming. Then on the fifth and final floor, another window broke open and a man came flying out. He flailed and kicked until he hit the sidewalk and burst open like a melon. Papers and documents came floating down after him like lazy doves.

Xiang had no doubt that Toru had systematically slaughtered every single person inside that building, and done so in less than a minute. The fire which had somehow begun on the second floor was spreading across the entire upper face of the building by the time Toru nonchalantly came out the broken front door and walked down the steps. He was wiping his bloody knuckles on someone’s shirt like it was a rag before tossing it into the bushes. The deadly Iron Guard looked across the street, right at Xiang, and the two briefly made eye contact before Toru simply strolled away to disappear back into the city.

Witness my conviction.

Chapter 14

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something in your life.”

—Winston Churchill, 1933

Free City of Shanghai

“Good morning,
Mr. Sullivan.” For being so little, her voice was incredibly loud when you had a splitting headache. “I brought you breakfast.”

Sullivan cracked open his eyes and groaned. The light sneaking through the boarded-up window told him it was just after dawn. “You are way too happy in the morning.” But then he smelled that she’d brought him coffee, and all was forgiven. “Morning to you too, Lady Origami.”

He didn’t like waking up in the partially bombed remains of an old tenement, but it beat not waking up at all. His skin hurt from his brush with absolute zero in the tunnels, but the healing spells he’d managed to carve into his body had been able to repair the frostbite. The ones on his chest were still gathering Power and burned with a feverish heat, which made him realize he was naked, so he quickly pulled the thin blanket up. Not that there was a whole lot in the way of privacy in the dump the Shanghai Grimnoir were using as a safe house, but Lady Origami was still a lady. “Where are my clothes?”

“You swam in the river. I hung them up to dry, Mr. Sullivan.”

He could barely remember much after he, Heinrich, Lance, and Zhao had stumbled their way here in a half-drowned fog. It was like Zhao’s magic had been so cold it had messed with his head. “Thank you for doing that.”

“It is fine. You are covered. I work with pirates many years. Pirate ship is very small place. A difficult place to have privacy. But none of the pirates are such a big man as you.”

“Excuse me?”

She looked away sheepishly. “I mean muscles. Very big muscles. Like picture in magazines. I . . .” Now she was blushing. “I mean the last page picture, where first is a skinny boy, who gets sand kicked in face by bully, and then sends away for book about how to lift heavy things. You look like last picture, with the muscles.” Now she was just getting exasperated trying to explain. “Sorry, Mr. Sullivan. I should not have spoken.”

“Comes with being a Gravity Spiker.”

“Yes.
Omosa.
Heavies. I am familiar. They are all so very big.”

“Thanks, I guess. And please just call me Jake.” Lady Origami smiled, as if to say
that’s not likely
. “What’re you doing here anyway? Doesn’t the
Traveler
need its Torch?”

“Not so much to do there now while she is parked. Whole ship is taken over by Fuller building his machine in the hold. She cannot fly until this machine is done. So until then, I come here to maybe help burn Iron Guards.” She knelt by his sleeping mat and set the tray next to his elbow. Breakfast appeared to be balls of sticky rice.

He had to remember that this lady also enjoyed participating in the brutal close-quarters fighting of a pirate boarding party. “That’s mighty brave of you.”

She shook her head. “Not so much. I like to help. And I do not like Imperium soldiers. Not at all. And this city swims in them. You are lucky to be alive, Mr. Sullivan. The Icebox child nearly killed you.”

Sullivan shrugged as he took the coffee, hot and black, perfect to warm his bones. “The kid did what he had to do.”

“I do not trust Iceboxes. Their magic is . . . hmmm . . . Forgive me. I am still practicing my English. Their magic is
incorrect.
”

Of course, to a Torch, whose magic was based in manipulating the consuming rampage of fire, the absence of heat energy would seem blasphemous. If he wasn’t such an analytical man, he might even feel the same way about Heinrich’s Fade magic. But he wasn’t feeling particularly analytical right then though, since huge Power use always left him starved. Going all
wispy
like that, just wasn’t right.

Lady Origami didn’t seem inclined to go anywhere, so he just started shoving rice balls into his face. They were either better than expected, or he was just so hungry that it didn’t matter. She knelt there, watching him, and he had to marvel how she was able to sit like that without hurting her knees.

“How is everybody else?” he asked between mouthfuls.