Snow globes shattered against concrete as children stopped dead and clutched at their equally shocked parents. A woman pinched her cheeks until beads of blood burst from it. A cook at a pancake stand pressed a thumb to the hot griddle. Everyone wondered whether the sudden, awful numbness was somehow unique to them.

Then, it was over.

Thomas shrugged off his jacket and threw it over Sayuri's head.

She flailed and sputtered. "What art thou—?!”

He snatched her flailing arm. "Keep that jacket over your face."

She tried to pull the jacket off with her free arm before he roughly yanked her forward.

“A pox on thine Momojin hands, that they handle me roughly so!"

As the crowd recovered from their sudden emotional vacuum, eyes wandered towards the unkempt Æfrian security guard wrangling with a girl dressed in fine clothes. Thomas leaned in with a pointed whisper.

“May I remind you, Lady Ueichi, your attackers are still around and looking for a girl with gold all over her face."

She stopped trying to pull the jacket off.

"The entrance will be swarming with eyes, and I don't know who's with them and who isn't. Can you do whatever you did to get us down here again?”

The jacket ruffled with her shaking head. "The act maketh me sick."

"Can you deal with being a little sick?"

"Nay. Further use doth weareth me thin. Already, I may faint."

Thomas exhaled through his teeth. "Okay… Okay. If we're gonna sneak you out we're gonna need masks and—"

Muffled through the jacket, she said, "Mayhap I attempt what our adversaries hath done?”

“Turn invisible?”

“Forsooth.”

“And go where?”

“T’thy place of employment?

Thomas’ mind replayed to him the memory of Persimmon saying he was supposed to be stationed by the elevators. And Shimada telling him to be there.

"We can't."

"Why ever not?"

"I'll explain when we're not—" he yanked her behind a portable toilet as two Ashio security guards walked past. "—busy."

She pulled the jacket back and glared. "Givest me the sovereignty of mine body, and thine hands be kept to thine own body. Seest how the silk doth tear!”

Sayuri rubbed a spot where her kimono's long sleeves had ripped to reveal a gold-veined elbow. During the war, he'd picked up the habit of using more force than he needed. Undershirts, shoelaces, drywall, and drawers all suffered under his body's reign of terror.

"I'll try to be gentler. But your life takes priority over some silk, understand?"

“As long as the fates doth demand.”

“Sure, let’s—”

His thoughts dissolved into deadened mush. In an instant, Thomas became a floating ball of sensation, a point of view in open space, and a miserable one. A mind previously full of buzzing intentions, projections, and emotions became a passive spectator.

“Where art thou, Mr. Chester?”

Sayuri’s nervous voice came from his left.

“Here.”

“Shall we hasten?”

He felt a small hand grasp blindly for his and then hold tight. The effects of the Shroud surrounding Sayuri forbid him from thinking deeply, so he let her take him by the wrist towards the entrance to the Ueden campus.

The people they passed became sucked into the effects of the Shroud and adopted looks of blank discomfort. A few, after regaining their humanity, searched for the nearest guards to report the mental intrusion. He wanted to tell Sayuri to avoid people, but his adaptation to the Shroud was rooted in military service. He could only take orders.

Thomas found himself led out of the campus and to a pedestrian bridge spanning the main highway that circled Lake Yoyane and the entire city of Suigen. On the opposite side of the bridge lay the entrance plaza of the Genji Heavy Industries campus. The sight of their gorgeous, octagonal skyscraper made him nauseous.

They were well embedded in the crowd flowing in and out of the expo when Sayuri dropped her hatsuden and they rejoined the visible spectrum. A few rubbed eyes, but the immediacy of their reappearance hid them. Sayuri looked pale and wobbly.

“Do you need to sit down?” he asked.

“N-Nay. ‘Tis merely a spell of vertiginousness. I shall not be a burden.”

Thomas pointed to a bench. “Let’s get a breather anyway. It’ll be worse if we run ourselves ragged, right?”

“I d-defer to thy… to— yes, ‘tis a good idea.”

Sayuri breathed heavily as they took a seat. While she recovered, Thomas explained his suspicions about Ashio’s complicity in the attack.

After a brief reprieve, Sayuri announced, “’Twas terrorists.”

“Huh?” Thomas asked.

“Zaizatsu… erm, clan-conglomerates, in thy tongue, though they engageth in competition, be nonetheless forbade from the shedding of blood by laws and rights which bindeth all subjects of His Augustness the Thalassic Emperor by laws of property and right to one’s body, person, and freedom from the tyranny of violence visited there’pon. We must hasten to Ashio,” Sayuri said.

“Why?” he said, barely able to follow her archaic dialect.

“Thou implieth ‘twas a faction of Ashio at whose feet the guilt lay. The matter doth impel us to alert the first house of Ashio of the treachery that poisoneth their roots, where’pon they shall provideth us with resources that we may resolve this… worriment.”

Her words were reigniting his headache. Ignoring them for a moment, he considered their options. Returning to the Ashio building would be dangerous, but so would hiding a girl whose skin was half made of gold from a hit squad of former Imperial Special Forces. If Sayuri was right about the first house of Ashio being unaware, he could pass the problem along and let them deal with her. Thomas was just a man, after all, and a mess of one.

Thomas stood up from the bench. “We can try.”

The walk to Ashio took less time than he anticipated because Sayuri power-walked to match Thomas’ long strides. For being the heiress to the richest conglomerate in the world, he appreciated her tenacity. Sayuri was nothing like the daughters of Ashio executives he sometimes dealt with.

When they arrived about an hour later, the only person in the lobby was a young man at the reception desk. Bewilderment sprouted on his face as Sayuri strode across the lobby like her family owned it, her kinkawa glittering in the chandelier lighting.

“Is anyone from the Ashio first house here at the moment?” Thomas asked.

The receptionist shook his head blankly.

“Kochira ni Ashio honke no kata wa irasshaimasukaa?” Sayuri asked.

Whatever she said, the effect was immediate. The receptionist straightened up his back and averted his gaze.

“H-Hai!”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The two of them continued to speak, with Sayuri sounding like a scolding father. After some brief back-and-forth, the receptionist’s trembling hands dove for the rotary dial of a phone. Despite not knowing a damn word they said, Thomas had a bad feeling.

“Did you tell him who you were just now?”

Sayuri nodded. “Who ought I play at?”

Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose. “Anyone! Anyone other than you! We have no idea who could—" Thomas paused to watch the receptionist yammer into the phone in Kaihongo. “This was a bad idea. Let me grab something from upstairs and let’s leave.”

“But the Ashio first house—”

“They’ll find out.”

Taking the elevator with Sayuri in tow, Thomas headed for the briefing room and his grenadier’s jacket. Was it stupid to go back for it when they were being hunted by professional assassins? Yes, but it was a very fine jacket.

Throwing the burgundy jacket over his back was like a shot of the finest morphine. In an instant he felt composed. He dug his hands into the jacket’s empty pockets just to feel them again. As though resonating with his turning luck, he spied a wallet amid his former teammates’ shed clothes. He was in the middle of flipping through it when Sayuri interrupted.

“Erm, Mr. Chester…”

Sayuri pointed out the window. Below, a squadron of men in navy blue combat armor with the Genji clan-conglomerate logo emblazoned in white on their back piled into the building. Nearby, a commanding officer spoke into a field telephone, the man’s gaze fixed on the upper floors of the building.

Thomas shook his head in disbelief. Partly at their speed, and partly at his own stupidity in going for his jacket. No, that was worth it. He needed his grenadier’s jacket.

Sayuri looked confused. "What business hath Genjūkо̄ with the Ashio Detective Agency?”

"Sayuri..."

"Lady Ue—"

"They’re here for you."

Thomas watched as her expression of confusion turned into recognition, to shock, and finally to fear.

"N-Nay, be they my family's rivals— 'tis unthinkable! There are rules which— which governeth—"

Thomas drew his gun and looked out the window at an angle. He estimated if the Genji soldiers took the stairs, they could be on top of Sayuri and him in a minute and a half.

"—and whereupon if one clan breacheth these laws, disrepute would fall on their house, thus there doth exist an explanation—"

Thomas grabbed Sayuri and pointed to a set of trolley tracks a few blocks away. “You’ve recovered, right? Get us there.”

“I-I would prefer not.”

He shook her by the shoulders. “Sayuri, if you don’t—”

They were on the tracks. Sayuri’s skin was an angry shade of pink and her eyes went unfocused. “There. Thy… thy j-jacket we have come to… to…”

He pulled her arm around his waist before she toppled over and walked her along the tracks. For a moment, he thought she would pass out, but in the feverish tone of someone about to throw up, she continued, "We live under Shisanshugi, Mr. Chester, which avoideth the flaws of feudalism. 'Tis innovation and market which decideth victors of competition, not conflict of arms. Thus, ‘twas not the machinations of the clan of Genji.”

Up ahead, two cones of light emerged from a tunnel under a lakeside skyscraper.

"Oiii!" Thomas yelled, waving his hands.

To his knowledge, it was the only word that meant the same thing in Æfrian as it did in Kaihongo. Angry bells rang back at him, but the trolley crawled to a stop. The Æfrian language greeted him at the door.

"What the feck do ye think yer doin'!?"

It was the same portly conductor from earlier. His eyes bulged with a mixture of anger and fear for his job.

"We're in a hurry sir, and—"

"Everyone's in a feckin' hurry! You surely aren't so feckin' special ye've got an invitation to run out onto me gods-damned tracks and hold up the schedule!"

Thomas fished for his ticket.

"Don't get yer ticket out, sir. Don't get out yer ticket. I'm not feckin' takin' it. Now—” He lowered his voice for the swear, “git the fuck off me tracks."

Sayuri stepped around Thomas. “Hark! Thou speakest to the first house of Clan Ueichi, who t’would behoove thee to perpend, is majority stakeholder of the Suigenkyо̄ Municipal Railway Company. Thou wilt not refuse me usage of mine own lawful property, nor labor paid from my clan's coffers. Dost thou understand?"

The conductor's boiling red face turned pale as snow.

The conductor stood aside and bent into a 90-degree bow. A practiced, "m-moushiwakegozaimasendeshita!" rolled off his tongue without a hint of the man's thick, northern Ӕfrian accent. Thomas looked on with a hint of embarrassment. Sayuri didn't deign to look at all, taking a seat with visible disgust at the grime of public transportation.

Post-haste, the trolley lurched into motion. They were the only passengers on it. He sat across the aisle from her.

"He didn't even bother to check identification," Thomas said, still trying to comprehend magic more powerful than hatsuden.

"Mr. Chester?"

“Hmm?"

"Where are we going?"

Thomas didn't know yet. Brief though their encounter was, Persimmon came across as a ruthless professional. Thomas' apartment would be ransacked and staked out, and he had no friends or family to turn to.

Except one. Was he really going to take her there? Anywhere else and they ran the risk of chatty mouths talking about a girl half made of gold. Gods, it would have to be there.

"To a friend of mine. At least for the night.”

"Dost thou meanest… in th’plains?"

"That a problem?"

"Nay! 'Tis merely… erm, is it parlous? For one as myself, ‘tis the worry.”

"Safer than on the plateau,” he replied.

More passengers got on the trolley. Sayuri did her best to keep her head down, but her skin glittered even under the dim lights of the trolley, attracting attention. That was another matter Thomas hoped his friend could assist with.

Trying to ignore the attention, Sayuri looked out the window. Enthralled by the working class Kaihonjin, she gazed at girls her own age doing mundane things like hanging laundry, entertaining younger siblings, or chatting with neighborhood friends across low fences.

"They look gay," she said softly.

It took Thomas a moment to recall the word had a more archaic meaning which Sayuri would be more familiar with.

"Happy?"

The young woman Sayuri was spectating was doing nothing more interesting than rubbing the belly of a dog.

"Yes."

Thomas was struck by a deep ache for the stability and comfort the scene implied. "Maybe they are.”

Sayuri's interest grew as the trolley left the plateau. It was especially caught by the titanic factories and mills, the building blocks of her family's wealth. The Genjūkо̄ steel mill and its soaring blast furnace towers was particularly enchanting. But once they got off the trolley, her fascination shifted to the people.

Loud, dirty, obscene, and disorderly, Æfrians made up for hours under the Shroud by exploding into liveliness. Teenage boys sized up for fights, mothers shouted conversations across the street with babies slung across their breasts, and grown men burst with laughter from the open window of a pub.

From a third-story balcony, teenage girls jeered at a group of boys down on the street using Æfrian words Sayuri had never been taught. When one of the girls retrieved a head of rotten cabbage and flung it at the boys, Sayuri burst into a fit of giggles. Thomas moved to her left side, shielding her from the sight of a boy's dead body lying under a half-buried truck tire.

After a half hour of walking, the neon sign he was looking for came into view.

"Kinumakura?"

Sayuri seemed confused by the Kaihongo characters glowing in the middle of an Æfrian neighborhood. The establishment had a Kaihongo name, but no one used it, nor was it intended to be used. The main reason was to keep its actual name, The Silk Pillow, secret from children.

Inevitably, its exotic mystery turned into a rite of passage for older children to scandalize younger kids with forbidden knowledge. Several such children were playing in the dirty street out front, using a rusted-through combustion tractor as the cockpit of an imaginary gunship.

Thomas paused at the door, exhaled, and opened it.

The lounge of The Silk Pillow was lit by motley of string lights soldered together, resulting in overlapping mosaics of red, blue, and green across the dark room. In the corner nearest the door was a bar and across from it, a small stage. Rickety wooden stairs rose up the left side of the building to where business was conducted. Pasted to a pillar was a laminated sheet with pictures of women on it.

They were a few hours before peak. The only people in the lounge were a handful of workers drinking and chatting and a bouncer in a tacky vest and dress shirt rolled to his elbows. Bloated face, tired eyes, and the scar of an old graze wound on his thick neck told Thomas they shared life stories.

The bouncer raised an eyebrow at Sayuri. "Hold up. What's this?"

Thomas stood with wrists clasped in front of him and spoke calmly and plainly, the way he liked patrons to act. "We're not here for services. I need to speak to one of the girls."

"You're not speaking to anyone other than me," he said, shifting to block more of the doorway.

"It's fine, Harry, you can let him in.”

Harry stepped aside.

The woman who cleared him, Victoria, wore a green rayon dress smattered with sequins and sat at a table with two other women sipping a glass of plum wine.

"How've you been Tom?" Victoria asked. She tried and failed to make her glances at Sayuri subtle.

"Not great, Vic. I need to talk to Milly."

The comment bought a giggle from the three women.

"I don't think you'll have any more luck than usual. Even with your little..." Her pinkie finger hovered in the direction of Sayuri.

"Thou darest point thy finger—"

Thomas grabbed Sayuri’s shoulder and squeezed.

"That's what I need to speak to her about,” he said. “Tell her this isn't about— this is different.”

Victoria hummed. "I don't know Tom..."

"Vic, you remember what you said after I knocked out the guy who pulled a knife on you?"

Victoria exhaled in annoyance. "I said I'd do anything you want me to."

"I'm cashing in five years later. Go get Milly.”

Victoria went upstairs with a huff. While they waited, the other two women appraised Sayuri.

"What's the deal with her face, Tom? I've never seen glitter like that before. It's real pretty," said Mary.

"Not my business to know.”

The other, Sarah, laughed. "Gods you haven't changed a bit. Everything to the letter."

"I'd wager you appreciated my tight lips when patrons were asking when you got off work."

Sarah threw her hands up. "Alright, you got me. I won't ask about the grenner anymore."

Despite the ordeal getting here, Sayuri only now seemed uncomfortable, though apparently not because of the slur. Sayuri looked like she had at the exhibition reveal. Then, as now, she appeared flustered and upset, but the swirling lines of luster buried her expression under technological and aesthetic marvel.

Before Thomas could reprimand Mary and Sarah, footsteps descended the stairs.

Every time he hoped it wouldn't happen, and every time it did: The moment Milly came into sight, Thomas' heart slammed into his rib cage like a feral beast in captivity. With just a side-glance, the two amber suns of her eyes burned him. The fuel feeding those eyes flowed from some deep, buried reservoir, its existence only made visible when it burst to the surface like an oil well flare.

The contours of her round, pale face reminded him of pink marble worn by erosion into smooth, dignified curves. In the plains, most folks let themselves be carved away like quarried stones. But not Milly. Only time had the right to chip at her.

He had caught her preparing for work with a face full of unblended hues. Underneath the artificial pallor lay her blemishes, scars, and creases, the things he liked best about her. They turned her into something firm in a world forever dissolving and floating away from him.

Draped over her was a baggy woolen shirt splotched with spilled cosmetics. She glided down the stairs with the scuff of slippered feet. Just that sound brought his pounding chest to booming crescendo. Leaning against the banister, Milly’s expression was tired and irritable.

“What, Thomas?"