The Sky Goes On

HER

Seijiro is already at the cabin door. I reach for my robe on the floor. He shakes his head. He grabs his hat from the floor by the door, puts it on, adjusts the brim. A straw hat and nothing else. That's what he's wearing to walk onto the balcony of his ship.

I leave the robe and pull his coat around my shoulders. We climb the short stair to the forecastle.

The open deck is cold. Good.

The wind hits my bare skin when I step onto the forecastle, high-altitude air that carries nothing warm, that has never touched the ground. My hair is loose and tangled and I'm wearing Seijiro's coat over nothing and my legs are unsteady and behind me, his hand on my hip, he's wearing nothing but that hat and grinning about it.

The main deck below us is a riot of bodies.

The crew of Tielong's Daughter has turned the spoils of Waraku into something that would have made my father vomit. An Oni has one of the concubines pinned against the mainmast, her legs around his waist, his hands gripping her thighs, and she's screaming and I can't tell if it's pain or something else. Two humans are fucking a woman from the auction on a pile of silk bales, one behind her, one underneath, and her head is thrown back and her mouth is open. A Tengu is sprawled across a cargo crate with his crow-feathered wings spread wide, armor off, a woman riding him while another pours rice wine over both of them, laughing. Up in the rigging, two more Tengu have a woman between them, wings half-open for balance, fucking her against the crossbeam thirty feet above the deck with the wind in their feathers. Someone is on their knees between an Oni's gray legs, head bobbing, and the Oni has a jug in one hand and is drinking without looking down. Three men are sharing a woman against the port rail, passing her between them. Rum running in dark rivers across the deck boards. The sounds come up to the forecastle in waves, grunts and the slap of skin on skin and moaning and the wet percussion of bodies and the roar of crew who have been at sea too long and took everything they wanted. The smell of it, sweat and cum and liquor and the smoke that's still in everyone's hair.

I stand on the forecastle above all of it and the wind pulls my coat open. I leave it open.

Below me, on the main deck, I can see Itsumi. My father's best jitō, the one who tracked my mornings, who steered me by the elbow, who smiled with perfect warmth while she wrote reports on every hour I was absent. She's on the deck. An Oni has a possessive fist in her hair, and she's on her knees with her silk robes hiked around her waist and her face has gone tight and flushed in a way I recognize immediately.

I feel the wind on my skin and the wood under my feet and Seijiro's hand on my hip and I smile.

His hands find my waist and he turns me so my back is against his chest. The coat falls open. He slides it off my shoulders and lets it drop. Naked on the forecastle, the sky in every direction.

"They can see us," he says.

"Good."

His hand slides down my stomach. Lower. His fingers find me and I'm still wet from the cabin, still sensitized, and my hips buck against his hand and a sound comes out of me that carries over the deck noise and someone below cheers. His mouth on my neck, his fingers inside me, the cold air on every part of me the coat was covering, and the cold sharpens everything, makes every nerve loud.

I push back against him. I can feel him hard and bare against me and I grind into it and he gasps against my neck. His free hand grabs my hip and holds me still and his fingers keep working and I'm gripping the forecastle rail with both hands and the wind is hitting my chest and my nipples are hard from the cold and the crew can see all of it.

"The rail," I say.

He pulls his fingers out of me and then his hands are on my hips, bending me forward over the railing. The wood presses into my stomach. The void is below me, nothing but sky and cloud and the distant dark where the world drops away, and the wind is on my back and my breasts are hanging over the rail and the burning town is behind us and I can feel him lining up.

He pushes into me and my grip bites into the rail and I hear myself, loud, across the ship.

HIM

Saeko is bent over the rail of my ship, I am buried inside her, and I am the luckiest man in the Jōkū Islands. Everyone on this deck is going to know it.

I pull back and drive into her again. My hand closes on her hip and she cries out, the noise better than anything on this ship. Below us, the main deck is a mess of bodies and spilled liquor, Oni pouring rice wine over each other and the women from the auction, a Tengu with his armor off and a jug in each hand screaming at the sky, someone fucking someone over a barrel of silk and neither of them stopping to look up. The ship stinks of alcohol and smoke and sex.

Hard, one hand on her hip, the other braced on the rail, and she pushes back into me and she is loud. She is louder than any of them.

I look down at my crew. I grin.

"Gentlemen!" I shout. Mid-thrust. Both hands on her hips. "The governor of Waraku sends his regards!"

The deck erupts. Katsuro throws his jug at the mast and it shatters and he howls. The Tengu in the rigging beat their wings. An Oni I don't recognize stands on a cask and pounds his chest. Ale and rum sloshing everywhere, people laughing, screaming, fucking, and my crew is looking up at their captain on the forecastle with the governor's daughter bent over the rail and they are having the best morning of their lives and so am I.

I slam into her and the rail groans and she grabs the wood with both hands and grins over her shoulder at me. The dark smile. The real one.

"Harder," she says.

"His harbor!" I shout to the deck. Harder. "His garrison!" Harder. "His customs seal, his silk, his ships!" Every word a thrust and the crew is counting, banging fists, stamping boots, and Saeko is screaming and I am not quiet either. Two years of being hunted and this is the answer: his daughter on my rail, his town burning behind us, his rope still swinging from his own gate beam, and my crew howling at the sky.

"His daughter!" someone shouts from the main deck, and the laugh that rips through the ship is enormous and filthy and I love every one of these bastards.

Saeko reaches back and grabs my neck and pulls my mouth to her ear.

"Mine," she says.

Not the governor's. Not the jitō's. Not the cage's. Mine.

Hers.

My crew is watching. I should say something magnificent. My mouth opens and nothing comes out. She has done the impossible.

The word hits me in the chest and detonates. I grab her hips with both hands and drive into her so hard the rail creaks and she cries out and I can feel her tightening around me and I'm close and the ship is shaking or I'm shaking and the crew is still roaring below us.

She comes. Her body locks, her back bowing, her legs shaking, and the scream she makes cuts across every other sound on this ship and into the open sky and the crew below answers it with a howl that carries for a mile.

I follow, buried in her, my forehead against her spine and my hands locked on her hips. The whole ship celebrates while I finish, and I have won everything. It is the best day of my life.

I stay inside her. My arms come around her waist and I pull her upright against my chest. We stand at the rail, breathing hard. The forecastle is the highest point on the ship. The sky is ahead of us. The Jōkū Islands are going to remember this morning.

HER

Seijiro's arms are around me from behind, his chest against my back, both of us breathing. I stay still. The wind dries the sweat on my skin. The dawn light finds us on the forecastle, naked, visible.

His hands bruised my hips. I can feel them already, the ache settling in, and I want the bruises. My father called my skin porcelain. He kept it perfect, kept me perfect, kept me displayed. I want to press these bruises tomorrow and feel Seijiro's hands on me instead of my father's word for what I was.

The sky opens ahead. Islands at every altitude, scattered across the void, and the wind currents moving between them in invisible roads I want to learn. The High Keiten runs northeast. The Tokoyu loops the eastern edge. The cloud banks sit in silver layers below us, and beneath them, the void, bottomless and not frightening at all.

I press my back against Seijiro's chest. His arms tighten around me. The ship climbs.

The sky goes on and on.

浮世