by Jay Kristoff
Hana tried hard not to frown. “Where else would we go?”
“Anywhere you like. I don’t want you to feel like you owe me anything. This is a war, and I’m in it up to my neck. Fighting to bring down the Guild and set this country free from blood lotus. The smog. The deadlands. The poison that is chi.”
“I know,” Hana smiled. “I’ve heard you talking on the radio.”
“They call me a terrorist. They say I’m trying to destroy the whole country, not just the Guild. And for every person who listens to the pirate radio, there’s a dozen who long to go back to the days of plenty.” Yukiko shrugged. “Part of me can’t blame them. There’s no easy answer. We’re in for hard times once the Guild is gone.”
“We’re in for harder times if it stays.”
“Try telling that to a screaming mob.”
“Three stormdancers are louder than one.”
Yoshi scoffed, but for once, kept his opinions to himself. Yukiko looked between the pair, the question plain in her eyes.
“You’re a smart girl, Yukiko.” Hana’s laugh brightened the deepening dusk. “But you’re fucking crazy if you think we’d go back to sleeping in gutters after seeing all this.”
“So you’ll come with me? You’ll fight?”
“We’ll do more than fight.” Hana took her brother’s hand. “We’ll godsdamned win.”
Yukiko grinned and grabbed her in a bear hug, squeezing tight. Hana was taken aback at the sudden show of affection, but she felt the comforting strength in Yukiko’s arms, Buruu and Kaiah’s smoldering heat behind her, and for the first time in what seemed like her entire life, she felt absolutely righteous. Absolutely safe. And so she kissed Yukiko on the cheek and hugged her back, bathing in unfamiliar warmth.
The pair broke apart, the wind howling between them. And Kaiah stepped into the gulf and extended one wing, dipping her shoulder toward the ground.
– FLY WITH ME. –
* * *
The wind was all screams and clawing fingers, tearing her hair and howling in her ears. As they soared through the swirling, soggy gray, the air grew brittle and Hana leaned close, arms wrapped tight around Kaiah’s neck. Her clothes became soaked, hair clinging to her face as her stomach plummeted toward her knees, her missing eye burning like fire.
Ascending.
She could see Yukiko and Buruu off to her right, the sky-ship Kurea behind them. The vessel was a merchantman, four great propellers cutting through the chill air, its inflatable painted with an enormous dragon spitting fire across the canvas. Yoshi was somewhere aboard it—he’d flat-out refused to climb onto the thunder tiger’s back. Hana’s mind drifted to her childhood; the brief sky-ship journey she and her family had taken after her father had won his farm. She’d been awestruck, her stomach a storm of butterflies, the only time in her life she’d ever flown. Yoshi had spent the entire trip in their cabin, trying not to hurl.
The air grew sharp as razors, white plumes rolling from her lips. Hana clung to Kaiah’s neck with aching hands, teeth chattering in her skull. And just when she thought they must turn back, that they’d never break through the cloud, the sky turned red and the gray fell away into a sea of rolling iron beneath them, stretching wide as forever. Iishi crags pierced the cloud cover, snow-clad and shimmering. Greedy winds snatched the blasphemy from her mouth, and all the world beneath the clouds was forgotten, submerged beneath the ocean of Shima sky.
For that one dazzling moment, everything she could see was perfect.
Gods above. It’s beautiful.
– IT IS HOME. –
You can almost forget it all up here. All the hurt and the pain and the shit down there.
– WHY YOU WANT TO FORGET? –
… Sometimes it’s easier than dealing with it, I suppose.
Kaiah growled.
– DO NOT UNDERSTAND. YUKIKO ASKS ME TO LEARN MONKEY-CHILD WAY AND I CANNOT SEE. SILLY THINGS. LITTLE THINGS MADE SO BIG. FOOLISH. –
Our way is real simple, Kaiah.
– OH YES? –
We’re ugly. We’re selfish and greedy and shortsighted, fucking each other over for a drop of fuel or a difference of opinion. That’s pretty much the breadth of it.
Kaiah glanced across the red skies toward Buruu, and Hana sensed pure hostility, a low rumbling growl in her new friend’s chest.
– HUMANS NOT THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN BETRAY, MONKEY-CHILD. –
You’re talking about Buruu? What did he do?
– KINSLAYER. MURDERER. DISGUSTS ME. –
Kinslayer?
– DO NOT TRUST HIM, GIRL. NOT FOR A MOMENT. –
Why not?
– WILL BE REPAID IN BLOOD. –
Then why are you here? Why are you helping?
– REASONS NOT MINE TO TELL. –
The pair swooped back down through the cloud, fingers of jagged fringe kissing Hana’s cheeks. She thought of Akihito charging in and saving her from death in the yakuza warehouse. Those big arms around her shoulder, brute strength wrapped in impossible gentleness, keeping all the hurt at bay. The air grew just a little warmer at the memory.
Not all people are evil, I suppose. Some are just stupid.
– SOME ARE GREATER. YOUR YUKIKO SEES TRUTH. WILL BE REMEMBERED. –
My people always forget, Kaiah. All the most important things.
– DO NOT MEAN MONKEY-CHILDREN. I MEAN BLUE SKY AND CLEAN RAIN. THUNDER’S SONG. THEY WILL SING HER NAME LONG AFTER ALL ELSE IS DUST. –
The beast glanced over her shoulder, eyes as deep as the fall at their feet.
– WHO WILL SING FOR YOU? –
Who says anyone should? I’m no one.
– NOT WISH TO LEAVE A MARK ON THIS PLACE? NOT WISH TO BE SUNG OF AS THEY SING OF KITSUNE NO AKIRA? TORA TAKEHIKO? –
Those are the names of stormdancers. I’m not a hero. I don’t close hellgates or slay sea dragons. I rob drunkards and sleep in hovels and speak to rats. Sometimes I have fleas.
– NOT DREAM OF BEING SOMETHING GREATER? –
The wind thrummed with propeller song, whispering the plain and simple truth.
Everybody does …
She felt the heat inside the arashitora envelop her, fill her with a burning pride. Somehow she knew the beast was smiling at her. She found herself smiling back.
– THAT IS THE BEGINNING. –
Amusement enveloped the beast, bright and wicked like a child born to mischief. And before Hana could blink, Kaiah pressed wings to flanks and they dropped from the skies. Hana’s stomach rose into her throat, screaming for all she was worth as they plunged straight toward the forest below.
Pull up!
– USED TO PLAY THIS GAME WITH MY CUBS. –
We’re going to die!
– BREATHE. –
We’re falling too fast!
– NOT FALLING. FLYING. –
The arashitora spread her wings, Hana’s insides crashing downward as they leveled out and swooped into the air again. The pain of her missing eye forgotten, blood pounding, body shaking; tremors borne not of terror but exhilaration. The world flying by beneath them, hundreds of tiny life-sparks in the forest below, the beating of her heart, entwined with the beast’s.
Alive.
So wonderfully, perfectly, impossibly alive.
She curled her fingers in the thunder tiger’s feathers, laughing as though the world was ending, and the beast opened her beak and roared like thunder. Like a storm that would wash away everything she was and everything she’d been, all the dirt and filth and blood scabbing in the gutters, leaving her clean and whole and beautiful.
Take me back.
Kaiah glanced back at the sky-ship Kurea, amusement flickering in her mind.
– HAD YOUR FILL OF FLYING? –
No, not back to the ship. Back up to the clouds.
Hana held on tight, blinked the rain and tears from her eye.
Let’s do it again.
6
INSURRECTION
It had been eight years
since Yukiko last laid eyes on Yama city.
Eight years, one mother, one father, and one lifetime ago.
Two thunder tigers soared over the metropolis, the rumble of a gathering storm and the Kurea at their backs. The Kitsune capital was a smudge on polluted riverbanks; a crust of brick and dirty tile surrounded by struggling rice paddies and long, smoking tracts of deadland. Storm clouds filed in one by one to smother the sun, refinery smoke bruising the sky.
There it is, Buruu. Home of my clan. Seat of Kitsune power in Shima.
IMPRESSIVE.
You think so?
… NOT REALLY, NO.
Well you’re in a lovely mood today.
I WAS TRYING TO BE POLITE.
Maybe stick to what you do best?
SARCASM IT IS, THEN.
They swooped lower, Hana and Kaiah beside them, watching the tiny bushimen on the walls below gathering to point and stare. Yukiko held her stomach, fighting mild nausea as the world rose up beneath them. The Fox capital was a fortress, built in the shadow of the haunted Iishi Mountains. Great walls encircled the city, topped with razor wire. The Amatsu river cut the capital in half, and a lone island sat in the middle of the flow, linked to either bank by broad bridges. Chapterhouse Yama was a pentagon of yellow stone in the island’s center, and a dozen airships hung about the sky-docks on either bank. To the south loomed the knotted tangle of the chi refinery, the Warehouse District, shrouded with grime and smog. Atop a hill on the west side of the city glowered Kitsune-jō—the mighty Fortress of the Fox.
I was eight when we left here. I remember standing at the railing and watching the people grow smaller and smaller as we flew away. Mother and Father beside me.
THEY WOULD BE PROUD OF YOU, SISTER.
How do you know that?
YOU LEFT THIS PLACE A CHILD. YOU RETURN A STORMDANCER. HOW COULD THEY NOT BE?
She smiled, put her arms around his neck.
You always know the right thing to sa—
A thunderous boom split the skies, pulling Yukiko’s thoughts back into the real. She looked down into the city, toward Chapterhouse Yama. The tower loomed on a flat spur of rock in the Amatsu river known as Last Isle. It was the symbol of Guild power in Kitsune lands. A bastion of razor wire and broken glass and dirty yellow stone.
And it was on fire.
The structure stood lopsided, smoke billowing from four of its five gates, covering the river with a soup of rolling black. Yukiko could see figures through the pall; insectoid shapes in burnished metal clashing on bridges and in dogleg alleyways on Yama’s west side. Citizens were simply fleeing across the Amatsu in floods, husbands holding wives and mothers holding children. Subterranean explosions shook the city’s spine, the popopopopop! of shuriken-throwers, the boiling hiss of flame-spitters. The smell of blood and fuel and burning meat.
She heard a shout behind, saw Akihito on the Kurea’s foredeck, waving frantically and pointing to the ship’s radio antenna. And as her belly dropped into her toes, Yukiko knew what had happened. Kaori had lived up to her word. She must have broadcast on the Kagé frequencies about the Guild rebellion. In a matter of minutes, she’d undone what had taken years, maybe decades to build. And all for the sake of hatred …
Another explosion tore through the chapterhouse, the building listing dangerously. Black smoke rose into the choking sky.
“Kaori,” Yukiko whispered. “You bitch…”
Buruu sailed through the ash and smoke as Yukiko tried to make sense of the conflict. She slipped behind Buruu’s eyes, saw dozens of Guildsmen clashing below, figures sprawled in the gutters, broken brass leaking red. So many …
I can’t tell them apart! Fly lower, Buruu. We can see—
NO.
… What?
I WILL NOT DESCEND.
What the hells are you talking about? We have to help!
TOO DANGEROUS. FOR YOU AND THEM.
The rebels? You’re not making—
NOT THE GUILDSMEN, YUKIKO. THE ONES INSIDE YOU.
Yukiko’s hand went to her stomach, the sparks of warmth gathered there.
This isn’t about them!
EVERYTHING YOU DO IS ABOUT THEM.
Oh my GODS, don’t start going all male on me now.
I AM EQUIPPED FOR LITTLE ELSE.
I’m still the same person! I’m not some damn incubator you have to wrap in cotton-wool!
CHARGING INTO MELEE WITH A HUNDRED WARRING CHI-MONGERS—
There are people down there dying!
BETTER THEM THAN YOU.
Godsdammit, it’s that kind of thinking that’s led us here! That one life is worth more than another. Guildsmen worth more than citizens. Nobles more than commoners. Shimans more than gaijin.
YUKIKO—
No! Either all life is worth fighting for, or none of it is!
A thundering shock wave crashed against them, nearly knocking her from Buruu’s back. Hana cried out, pointed at the chi refinery, the blossoming fireball rising into the skies. The complex shattered as if it were glass, claxon wails and screams lost under the explosion’s rumbling yawn. Lazy flame stretched up and out, black smears across blood-red skies.
“What the hells is going on?” Hana yelled.
“Kaori outed the Guild rebels over the wireless! The rebels had no warning this was coming. We have to help them!”
“Help who? I can’t tell who’s a rebel and who isn’t!”
RED.
Buruu’s voice echoed in the place where the headaches lived.
Yukiko squinted down through the black and blood haze. She glimpsed two Lotusmen weaving amidst the tumbledown maze, one pursuing the other, rocket packs trailing blue-white flame. The one in front was marked with red paint; messy strokes across its spaulders, one deep line down its featureless face. The Lotusman in pursuit fired a popping burst of shuriken from a handheld thrower, metal stars glittering like fireflies.
“The ones trying to run!” she shouted. “They’re marked with red!”
“You’re right!” Hana yelled. “They must be the rebels! Go! Go!”
Hana leaned into Kaiah’s spine and the pair dived into the smoke, spiraling as they fell. Kaiah clapped her wings together, an ultrasonic boom of Raijin Song rippling outward, scattering the Guildsmen in the streets below.
Buruu’s eyes were locked on the carnage. Bursts of shuriken fire severing fuel lines, rupturing chi tanks. Gouts of flame, tangled knots and clumsy brawls, Lotusmen colliding midair, tumbling to ruin beneath collapsing houses. Citizens were running from the inferno where the refinery used to be, tiny figures hurling themselves into the Amatsu river, its filthy “waters” already ablaze.
Buruu, they’re dying. We have to help them!
The arashitora said nothing, amber eyes locked on the carnage below. Yukiko’s fingers ran over her stomach, the place she wouldn’t let herself think about. She reached out with the Kenning and felt warmth there, resisting the urge to turn away.
Brother, I need you on my side. On our side. Now, more than ever.
Buruu sighed from the tips of his feathers. Muted daylight gleamed on the metal covering his wings, the polarized glass over her eyes, the Guildsmen fighting and dying below.
WHAT OTHER SIDE WOULD I BE ON?
And like a stone, they dropped from the sky.
* * *
There was no room in Hana’s head for understanding.
The girl was no stranger to violence and death—all their lives, she and Yoshi had fought for every inch, every scrap and desperate breath. But this was different. This was a battle they’d write about in history books. This was a day people would remember. Where were you when the rebels rose and set fire to Yama city? Where were you when the Guild War began?
Well, it just so happens I was there. Skies painted blood, flying through the smoke and flames on the back of a godsdamned thunder tiger.
She’d stalked Kigen’s alleys for years inside Daken’s mind, the tomcat’s impulse of scent and sight and instinct augmentin
g her own. But Kaiah’s mind was awash with a feral, predatory overload. Nothing like she’d felt with Daken, nothing so complex—it almost made her feel guilty, to form a bond so deeply and so quickly. She could feel the smoke in Kaiah’s eyes, seething thermals beneath her wings, the weight of the tiny monkey-child on her back. But at the same time, Hana was still in her own head, wind-tangled hair stuck to her cheeks, exhilaration pounding against her ribs like a steamhammer.
The air was filled with metal shards, Kaiah banking and rolling between the shuriken spray. Guildsmen tumbled from the air as she passed, blue-white flame and mists of red, gurgling, metallic screams. Hana felt an impact at her shoulder, then realized Kaiah had been grazed, not her. She felt stabbing pain in Kaiah’s leg, looking down to find a glittering metal star protruding from her own thigh. And there, in the midst of the smoke and the screams and the blood, she realized she couldn’t tell where she ended and the thunder tiger began.
Tearing and biting, ripping and roaring, only those marked with red untouched. Swooping through the smoke, seeing soldiers; Iron Samurai tromping under the black Kitsune flag. Hana realized the Fox Daimyo must have sent out troops to restore order. She saw a general leading the soldiers, struggling to form words rather than a shapeless scream.
“General! The Guildsmen wearing red paint—they’re rebels! They’re on your side!”
She heard a roar behind, turned to see Yukiko and Buruu cutting through the air, blood spattered on snow-white feathers and snow-white skin. Yukiko was sitting tall, a naked katana in her hand, its blade gleaming in the inferno light.
“Rebels!” she cried, pointing to the Kurea. “We offer sanctuary! Head to our ship!”
Hana saw the loyalist Guildsmen thrown into panic at Yukiko’s approach. Three Lotusmen beating on a rebel scattered like a flock of sparrows as her shadow fell over them. Dots of blue-white flame flared over the city, loyalists fleeing through the smoke and exhaust fumes toward their ruptured tower. Buruu roared, filling the skies with thunder.
“The Stormdancer!” one of them screamed. “Run while you can!”
And run they did. Fleeing to the docks in droves, the hulking shapes of ironclads gathered around the sky-spires. Artificers scuttling from their ruined tower, followed by wasp-waisted figures with silver razors on their backs. The Kitsune samurai charged over the Amatsu bridges, chainswords revving, calling for surrender as the Guild loyalists bundled into their ships.