Snow globes shattered. Children stopped dead and clutched at their equally shocked parents, everyone wondering whether the sudden, awful numbness was somehow unique to them. A moment later, 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 before he 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 ?frian security guard wrangling with a girl dressed in fine clothes. Thomas leaned in with a pointed whisper.

  “I understand you’re frightened, Lady Ueichi, but your attackers are looking for a girl with gold all over her face. The entrance is gonna be swarming with eyes, and I don't know who in Ashio is 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. "It maketh me sick."

  "Can’t you deal with being a little sick?"

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

  Thomas exhaled. "Okay… Okay. How about—"

  Muffled through the jacket, she said, "Mayhap we hide in transparency?

  “You mean invisible?”

  “Forsooth.”

  “And go where?”

  “T’thy place of employment? There we may contact my clan offices.”

  Thomas’ mind replayed the memory of Persimmon telling him he was supposed to be stationed by the elevators. And an unusually nervous 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 person, and thine hands be kept to thine own. 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, Thomas had picked up the habit of using more force than necessary. Undershirts, shoelaces, drywall, and drawers all suffered under his body's reign of terror.

  "I'll be gentler. But your life takes priority over 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.”

  He felt a small hand grasp blindly for his and hold tight. The effects of the Shroud surrounding Sayuri forbid him from thinking deeply, so he let her take him by the hand towards the entrance to the Ueden campus. Those they passed became sucked into the local effects of the Shroud and adopted similar looks of blank discomfort. A few, after regaining their humanity, searched for a security guard to report the mental intrusion. He wanted to tell Sayuri to avoid people, but his adaptation to the Shroud came from military service. He only took orders.

  Thomas found himself led out of the campus and to a pedestrian bridge spanning the main beltway circling the city of Suigen. On the opposite side was the entrance plaza of the Genji Heavy Industries campus. The sight of their enormous skyscraper made him nauseous.

  Embedded in the crowd flowing in and out of the expo, 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 be not a liability.”

  The way she said “liability” seemed especially out-of-place to him, even for her stilted speech.

  Thomas pointed to a bench. “Let’s take a breather anyway.”

  “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. Her response was not what he expected.

  “’Twas terrorists.”

  “Huh?” Thomas asked.

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

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

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

  Ignoring her for a moment, he considered their options: Returning to the Ashio building would be dangerous, but so would hiding a girl half made of gold from a hit squad of former Imperial Special Forces. If Sayuri was right about the first house of Ashio not knowing what was happening, he could pass the problem along to them and be done with the spoiled brat. Thomas was just one man, after all, and a mess of one. This was better for them both.

  “We can try,” he said.

  The walk to Ashio took less time than Thomas expected with Sayuri powerwalking to match his strides. For being the heiress to the richest conglomerate in the world, she was tenacious. Sayuri was nothing like the daughters of Ashio executives he’d dealt with.

  When they arrived 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, 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.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “H-Hai!”

  After some brief back-and-forth, the receptionist’s trembling hands dove for a phone. Despite not knowing a damn word they said, Thomas had a bad feeling.

  “Did you tell him who you were?”

  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 it over his back was a shot of the finest morphine. He felt composed again, digging his hands into the jacket’s empty pockets. 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, men in navy blue ballistic armor with the Genji Heavy Industries logo emblazoned on their back were entering the building. Thomas shook his head in disbelief. Partly at their speed, and partly at his own stupidity in going for his jacket. No, he needed his grenadier’s jacket.

  Sayuri looked confused. "What business hath Genjūkо? 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, family's rivals though they be— 'tis unthinkable! There are rules which— which governeth—"

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

  "—and should one clan breacheth these laws, disrepute would fall on their house, thus there doth exist a counterbalance—"

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

  “I-I prefer not.”

  He shook her. “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, erm, no I was saying…”

  He put his arm around her waist before she toppled over and walked her along the trolley tracks. For a moment, she seemed about to 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 the market which decideth victors of competition, not conflict of arms. Today’s attack was not… it cannot be the act of clan Genji.”

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

  "Oi!" Thomas yelled, waving his hands.

  To his knowledge, it was the only word that meant the same thing in ?frian as Kaihongo. Angry bells rang back, but the trolley crawled to a stop. ?frian 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.

  Thomas let go of Sayuri. "We're in a hurry sir—"

  "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!"

  Thomas fished for his ticket.

  "Don't get yer ticket out, sir. No, don't get out yer ticket. I'm not feckin' takin' it!”

  “Hark! Thou speakest to the first house of Clan Ueichi, who t’would behoove thee to perpend, is majority stakeholder of the Suigenkyо? Municipal Railway Company. Thou wilt not refuse me usage of mine own lawful property, nor labor justly compensated.”

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

  The trolley lurched into motion. They were the only passengers on it. He sat across the aisle from her.

  "He didn't even check identification," Thomas said, 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? But anywhere else they ran the risk of chatty mouths talking about a girl made of gold. Gods, he’d have to take her.

  "To a friend of mine. Just 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.”

  A rich Kaihonjin girl, she meant.

  "Safer than on the plateau,” he replied.

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

  Trying to ignore the attention, Sayuri looked out the window. She was enthralled by the working class Kaihonjin, gazing at girls her own age doing mundane things like hanging laundry 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 watching was doing nothing more interesting than rubbing the belly of a dog.

  "Yes."

  Thomas was struck by a deep ache at the same scene. "Maybe they are.”

  Sayuri's interest grew as the trolley left the plateau, caught by the titanic factories and mills, the building blocks of her family's wealth. The Genjūkо? steel mill and its soaring blast furnace towers were particularly enchanting. Once off the trolley, her fascination shifted to the people.

  Loud, dirty, obscene, and disorderly, ?frians 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 ?frian words Sayuri had never been taught. One of the girls retrieved a head of rotten cabbage and flung it at the boys and Sayuri burst into a fit of giggles. Thomas moved to her left side, shielding her from the sight of a 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 in the middle of an ?frian neighborhood. The establishment had a Kaihongo name, but no one used it, nor was it intended to be used. This was to keep its actual name, The Silk Pillow, secret from children. Inevitably, however, older children found out and used their forbidden knowledge to scandalize younger kids. Several such children were playing in the 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 was lit by motley string lights soldered together. The effect was overlapping mosaics of red, blue, and green across a dark room. In the corner nearest the door was a bar, and across, a small stage. Rickety 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 had arrived 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 but me," he said, shifting to block the doorway.

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

  Harry stepped aside. The woman who cleared Thomas, Victoria, wore a green rayon dress smattered with sequins and sat at a table with two other women sipping plum wine.

  "How've you been Tom?" Victoria asked, trying and failing to make her glances at Sayuri subtle.

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

  The comment earned a giggle from the 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. "Gee, I don't know Tom..."

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

  Victoria rolled her eyes. "I said I'd do anything you want me to."

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

  Victoria huffed and went upstairs. While they waited, the other two women appraised Sayuri and her copious amount of gold. It was a good thing they could only see her face and hands, he realized.

  "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."

  "You appreciated my tight lips when patrons asked when you got off work."

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

  Despite the ordeal, Sayuri only now seemed uncomfortable, though apparently not because of the slur for Kaihonjin. Sayuri looked like she had at the exhibition reveal, flustered and upset, but the swirling lines of luster buried this under technological and aesthetic marvel.

  Footsteps descended the stairs. 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 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 were carved away like quarried stones. But not Milly. Only time could 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?"