by Jay Kristoff
“To keep them safe. Their order began with the rise of the Tenma Emperors, when the Imperial Censors first started burning ‘indecent’ literature. The monks tattooed themselves with ancient arts and the deepest secrets, that they would not be lost to the Imperium’s hubris. Much harder to kill a living man than incinerate a paper scroll.”
Yukiko raised an eyebrow. “But what happened when a monk died?”
“I do not know.” Daichi coughed again, rubbed at his throat as if pained. “I do not even know if the monastery still stands. I have heard rumor it was destroyed. Others say it is cursed.”
“People say the same about these mountains.”
“Precisely,” Daichi smiled. “I am hoping the Painted Brotherhood may encourage those rumors for the same reason we do. To keep away unwanted eyes.”
“Painted Brotherhood…”
“So they were named.”
Yukiko drew a deep, shivering breath, dragged her knuckles across her mouth. Beyond the saké blur, deep through the haze she’d plunged herself into, she could still hear it. The cacophony. The inferno waiting inside her head.
“But the wedding…” she said. “Aisha. The dynasty … I can’t leave now.”
“You see our dilemma. We need you and Buruu more than ever. And in truth, if all that was at stake were a few more birds, I could risk your presence here. But the people of this village … the wives and daughters and husbands and sons…”
“I’m a danger to them.”
The old man sighed, staring at empty palms as if they might hold the answers he sought.
“Hai.”
“So risk flying north on what might be a fool’s errand, or stay here and risk the entire village? Those are my options?”
A faint smile. “Nobody said being the Stormdancer would be easy.”
Yukiko pressed her knuckles to her temples, the throb pulsing just below the saké lull. Misery and pain and the swelling tide, pushing them all back with the simple, undeniable truth—that the choice Daichi presented was no choice at all. The path was clear. She need only start walking. And every second she wasted was another second the wedding drew closer. But still …
But still …
“We’ll be swift,” she said. “Fly to Shabishii as fast as we can, find what truths we may. At the very least, it’ll be a lot quieter in the sky.”
Daichi nodded. “You will be back in time to stop Aisha’s wedding, with a little luck.”
“You know what they say.” A tired, colorless smile. “Kitsune looks after his own…”
“So I will pray.”
Daichi reached out and took her hand. His fingers were callused, faint liver spots and wrinkles decades deep. She met his eyes, and for a moment, she saw past the mask he wore, the iron he encased his soul inside. He seemed terribly old, bent beneath his burdens, tired beyond all want of sleep. His smile was frayed at the hem.
“I know what it is we are asking of you, Yukiko. I see the toll it takes.”
She looked into his eyes, searching for a hint of scorn and finding none. The words inside her were like living things, bubbling in her throat, demanding to be aired. She forced her lips together, fighting a losing battle to keep them at bay. When finally they spilled forth, they were a whisper muffled by the curtain of her hair.
“It’s all weighing too heavy, Daichi.” She took a shuddering breath, sighed. “Being this thing. This Stormdancer. I feel like an utter fraud. A little girl stamping her feet and screaming life isn’t fair.”
“You give people hope, Yukiko. The strength at the heart of all strength. The steps you take now, the first steps—they are always the hardest. But the footprints you leave in the earth behind you will be followed by thousands.”
“I’m so afraid sometimes. I think about my father…” She shook her head. “I haven’t shed a single tear for him, did you know that? He’s dead and I can’t even bring myself to cry.”
“It is not fear that chases away your tears, Yukiko-chan.” Daichi’s voice was low, tinged at the edges with a charcoal rasp. “It is rage.”
“Buruu says the same. He says it will burn me up inside.”
“No.” Daichi leaned forward, pinned her in his stare. “No, you listen to me, girl. Look around you. At this world they have left you. Red skies. Black rivers. Mountains of bones. You should be angry. You should be furious.”
He took hold of her hand, squeezed it so tight her knuckles hurt.
“The time for fear is long since gone. It died with the last phoenix, the last butterfly. It died when we traded the ease of the machine for the grace of our souls. Nothing will change if we cherish our fear as if it were a blessing. If we are afraid to tear down the old, and lose what we may in that unmaking, we will never build the new.”
“I’m not sure I can be what you want me to be, Daichi.”
The old man sat up straight, released his grip on her hands.
“I am sure,” he said.
Reaching behind him, he lifted the ancient katana from his back, held it out on upturned palms. Yukiko caught her breath, eyes roaming the lacquer scabbard, the golden cranes embossed into gleaming wood. The words he spoke danced like static electricity upon her skin.
“I wielded this blade through many battles, none so great as the one before us. And so I give it to you, who need it now more than I.”
“Gods,” she breathed. “I can’t accept this, Daichi…”
“You can.” He ran his hand across the hilt, a lingering caress of farewell. “And as I give you this gift, I give it a name. I name this blade ‘Yofun.’”
“‘Anger,’” she whispered.
“My gift to you, Yukiko-chan.” He nodded. “Use it to cut away your fear, and leave nothing in its wake. Cherish it. And cherish this truth I speak to you now, if no other before or after: the greatest tempest Shima has ever known waits in the wings for you to call its name. Your anger can topple mountains. Crush empires. Change the very shape of the world.”
He pressed the blade into her hand, watched her with cool eyes the color of steel.
“Your anger is a gift.”
* * *
Kin sat alone on the rope bridge, feet dangling over the precipice, listening to the fading day. The transition never failed to fascinate him; the light’s slow descent from copper to auburn, through dried blood and on to tar black. Tiny noises that would be lost in garish daylight, sharp and clear under the blanket of night.
When he was younger, locked inside his skin, the entire world was muted beneath the metal, the ever-turning chatter of his mechabacus. Chapterhouse Kigen had no windows, no way to tell night from day. The glow of cutting torches had been his dawn, flickering disks of halogen his stars. He was fourteen years old before he saw his first sunset, on the deck of the Thunder Child as they sailed from Kigen Bay. Even now, he could recall the tightness in his chest as that blinding globe sank toward the horizon, setting the entire island ablaze. All was flame and taut, black shadows, reaching out to him like the hands of old, forgotten friends. His breath had caught so completely in his lungs that for a terrifying moment, he thought the bellows in his skin had failed. That he was suffocating.
But in the Iishi, he could hear a thousand tiny voices amongst the whispering leaves. The wood beneath him sighing and shifting, the cries of night birds in search of prey, the song of insects amidst gentle fingers of wisteria vines. The soft beat of approaching footsteps.
He shot to his feet, heart in his throat. “Yukiko?”
“Hello, Kin.”
He reached out to her, awkward and stumbling and feeling entirely idiotic, gifting her a clumsy hug. She pressed her head against his chest and sighed.
“I was worried about you,” he breathed.
As she turned her face up to his and smiled, he smelled something sharp and poisonous on her breath. Noticed a vacant glaze in her eyes. “I’m all right.”
Reluctantly he released his hold, sat down on the footbridge again. Yukiko sat beside him, dangling he
r feet over the edge and swinging them back and forth like a child, eyes shining with the light of a falling sun. He saw her cheeks were slightly flushed, noticed she was carrying a bottle of saké in her hand. He tried not to stare at the katana strapped to her back.
“I thought you’d want to know.” She took a pull from the bottle, closed her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was strained. “Daichi and the council have voted. The False-Lifer will be kept alive. Locked up, of course. But they’re not going to kill her.”
“That’s good.” He glanced at the liquor again. “I’m glad.”
Sparrows sang to each other in the gloom, calling their good nights as the dark crept closer on velvet-quiet feet.
“Where’s Buruu?” he asked.
“Fishing.” She gifted him with a small smile. “Gorging himself before we leave. He eats like a lotusfiend on a comedown. I hope we can get off the ground.”
“Before you leave? Where are you going?”
“North. Shabishii Island.”
“Can I … come with you?”
She sighed, ran her knuckles across her brow. “I don’t think so. Your thoughts are like a tangle of thorns inside my head.” She held up the bottle, saké sloshing inside. “This is all that’s keeping them quiet.”
“My … thoughts?”
“Not just you.” She waved the bottle across the village. “Everyone. All of you. I can’t shut you out. So I’m just not sure it’s a wonderful idea for me to be around people right now.”
“That’s…” He floundered for the words, shaking his head. “That’s just…”
“Unbelievable?” she sighed. “Terrifying?”
“What’s causing it?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out in Shabishii. I have to control this power, Kin. I have to master it before it masters me. If I don’t, I’m a danger to everyone around me.” She touched his hand. “Including you.”
“Am I hurting you now? I mean … do you want me to go?”
“No.” Her finger trailed across his skin, goosebumps rising. “Not yet…”
Silence fell then. Crushing and empty. All the things he thought he should say sounded hollow in his head. The memory of her lips stirred in his blood, the thought of her body pressed against him echoed in his veins. It felt like she was running away from him. It felt like …
“Well, at least I’ll have something to do when you’re gone,” he shrugged.
She offered a teasing smile. “Miss me terribly?”
“I mean aside from that.” He gave her hand a shy squeeze. “I’m thinking about planting some blood lotus.”
“Lotus?” She blinked. “What for?”
“Experiment with it in a controlled environment. Maybe I can figure out a way to stop it killing the soil it grows in.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“To save what’s left of Shima, of course.” He could feel the warmth radiating from her skin. “Aside from the Iishi, everything is lotus fields or poisoned deadlands.”
“We won’t save Shima by planting more lotus, Kin.”
“Then how will we save it?”
She looked at him strangely then, and her voice was that of a parent talking to an infant.
“We incinerate the fields. So there’s nothing left but ashes.”
“You want to light the whole island on fire?”
“The lotus must burn, Kin. The Guild along with it.”
“But what about afterward? When all this is done?”
“Don’t you think you’re putting the rickshaw before the runner? Instead of worrying about what we do after the war is over, maybe you should think of ways to help us win it?”
He watched her, silent and still. She stared out into the dark, took another pull from the saké bottle. Pale skin, shadows smudged under her eyes. She looked sick, as if she hadn’t eaten or slept properly in days. Oily fingers of anxiety wormed their way into his guts.
“Well, I was thinking about that too,” he said. “I thought we could salvage the ruins of those ironclads. There’s bound to be all kinds of scrap to make the village more defensible. Shuriken-throwers. Armor plating. There are pit traps on the western rise, of course, but everyone around here keeps talking about how there are more oni moving through the lower woods. Old Mari told me they usually get restless after an earthquake, and the one this morning was the worst anyone around here can remember. If they came down in force…”
She sighed, glanced at him in the deepening dark. “They’re not going to let you build anything that runs on chi, Kin.”
“No, we can do it without combustion. I can set up the ’thrower feeders so they’re hand-cranked. They’ll be slower to fire, but it’s gas pressure that does most of the work.” Excitement in his gut, voice running quicker at the thought of building, of creating something again. “I can see it in my head. I was talking about it with Ayane and—”
“Ayane?” Yukiko frowned. “When did you talk to her?”
He blinked, confused. “This afternoon. In the prison.”
“Kin, you shouldn’t do that. The Kagé don’t trust it … I mean ‘her.’ If you spend time with her, they’re not going to trust you either.”
“You heard Atsushi and Isao at the pit trap this morning.” He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice. “None of them trust me anyway.”
“All the more reason to stay away from her.”
“She came all this way to find us. Do you realize what she’s given up to be here?”
“I don’t care what—”
“She’s alone, Yukiko. For the first time since her Awakening, she’s unplugged from the mechabacus. She can’t hear the voice of the Guild anymore, can’t feel them inside her head. Imagine spending years by the hearth of an Upside bedhouse. Everything is light and voices and song. And then one day you get thrown into the dark. You’ve never even seen night before. Never felt cold. But now it’s everywhere. That’s what she’s feeling right now, locked in that cell. That’s what she chose when she decided to come here.”
“We don’t know she chose anything. They could have sent her here, Kin—”
“Did you know every female born in the Guild becomes a False-Lifer?” He felt anger creeping into his voice, turning it hard and ugly and cold. “They don’t get a say in what they want to be. Don’t get to decide who they’re paired with, or when it’s time to breed. They don’t even get to meet the father of their children. Just another False-Lifer with an inseminator tube and a bottle of lubricant.”
“Gods, Kin—”
“So don’t shit on the choices she’s made, Yukiko.” He snatched his hand from hers. “It’s the first thing she’s decided for herself in her entire life. Not everyone gets a thunder tiger to help them out of their mistakes, you know. Some people risk everything they have alone.”
“Kin, I’m sorry…”
He climbed to his feet, and she lurched up after him, knocking the saké bottle onto its side. Rose-colored liquid spilled from the neck, soaking the boards at their feet. Kin turned to leave but she grabbed his hand again, pulled him around to face her.
“Don’t leave like this. Please.”
She was standing just inches away, fingers entwined in his own, lips parted ever so slightly. The world swayed beneath his feet, heart pounding against his ribs like a steamhammer. He was conscious of nothing in the world except her. The scent of her hair entwined in liquor perfume. Her skin radiating the warmth of a kiln, melting his insides. His mouth was suddenly dry, palms soaked. And though he tried, he felt as though he would never catch his breath again.
“Don’t be angry with me, Kin.” She inched closer. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“What do you want from me, Yukiko?”
“It might be weeks before we see each other again.” Her eyes searched his face, lingered on his lips. “But we have an hour or so until Buruu comes back…”
She pressed against him, hands parting the cloth on his chest, trailing al
ong his skin, white hot. He glanced at the spilled liquor around their feet, the tide of blood staining her cheeks and lips the color of roses.
“Kiss me,” she breathed.
She stood on tiptoes, arms slipping around his neck, mouth drifting toward his.
“Kiss me…”
She was like gravity, pulling him closer, heavy as the earth beneath him. No noise. No light. Only motion, only the pull of her, down, down to a place he wanted so badly he could taste it, feel it singing inside his chest. A place he would kill for. A place he could happily die inside.
But not like this.
Not like this.
“No.” He took hold of her shoulders, eased her away. “No.”
“Kin—”
“This isn’t you, Yukiko.”
“Not me?” she frowned. “Who am I then?”
“I’m not sure I know.” He gestured to the saké bottle on the floor. “Perhaps you find out when you get to the bottom?”
She remained herself for just a tiny moment longer, plain behind her eyes, wounded and sad and desperately alone. The girl he loved. The girl he would do anything for. And then she was gone. Wiped away in a rush of heat, pupils flashing, leaving the rage behind. The stranger who lived inside her skin. What had Ayane called her?
“The girl all Guildsmen fear.”
“You don’t get to judge me, Kin.”
“Godsdammit, I’m not judging you. I care about you! And I see you turning into this … thing, this Stormdancer, and piece by piece I see the Yukiko I know falling away.” He sighed, dragging a hand across his scalp. “I mean … you killed those Guildsmen, Yukiko. Three ironclads full. Over a hundred people. And you killed them.”
“I let one of them live.” Her stare was cold. Defiant. “But maybe I should have let them firebomb the forest? Maybe I should have let them kill you?”
“Since when were you a mass murderer?”
“Don’t you dare.” A low growl, eyes wide. “You stood by while thousands died—”
The words were a slap to his face, rocking him back on his heels. The memory of pale-skinned women and children, row upon row of gaijin shuffling meekly to meet their boiling end. Rendered down into fertilizer, reborn in some far-flung field as beautiful, blood-red flowers. He knew it was true. Everything she said. But to hear her say it …