by Jay Kristoff
It was the fifth summer of Buruu’s youth, his feathers and fur still off-gray, stripes not yet black. Esh was practically full-grown, and Drahk was old enough to be considered an adult—when next a dam came into heat, he would surely contest for the right to mate. They perched on the Bloodstone and watched the Others fly from the East, feathers as black as the spire beneath Buruu’s feet. He sensed some familiar shapes and scents, others new, half a dozen in all. They landed on the stone’s flat top, snuffling and preening before laying down to rest. The Everstorm bucks were in no hurry to commence hostilities—the contests sometimes lasted weeks.
Buruu watched the young females circling near the cloud line. They did an impressive job of appearing aloof, but all knew why they were here—scouting prospective mates among the Everstorm pack, feeding curiosity about the Morcheban blacks. He spotted one amongst the group, gray fur set with just the faintest impression of her stripes, dipping and rolling through the clouds. Buruu watched as if hypnotized, tail moving in confused, agitated arcs.
Who is she?
SHAI.
She’s beautiful.
I THOUGHT SO, TOO.
The Others stirred, prancing for the females’ benefit. This set the Everstorm bucks to growling, hackles raised, roaring challenge. Buruu took note of the new faces amongst the visitors—one particularly proud, a sleek head and a cruelly hooked beak, eyes burning emerald green. He roared his name was Sukaa, firstborn of Torr, Khan of the Others. And though he was barely older than Buruu by the look, he would suffer no challenge from those not born of Everstorm’s strongest. Prowling back and forth, he demanded to fight the sons of the Khan.
Drahk dismissed him with a glance. The buck was too young. No sport at all. Middle child and ever keen to fight, Esh accepted the challenge. And so the pair took to the air, two sleek, broad shadows on the wind, rolling amidst the thunder and circling like starving wolves around a haunch of bloody meat.
The arashitora below roared encouragement, and soon the pair joined, swooping comets of white and black shrieking across the skies. Sukaa was swift and fierce, but Esh was older, stronger by half. It soon became apparent the contest was one-sided. Buruu’s brother toyed with the youngster, batting him about as a cat plays a mouse, embarrassing the arrogant Khan-son thoroughly before finally bloodying him with one great swipe down his flank. It was a fine blow, and would give Sukaa a nice, humbling scar to remember the encounter by.
The females roared their amusement in the distance as Esh returned to the Bloodstone amidst the approving crows of the Everstorm pack. The Others glowered darkly, displeased their Khan-son had been so thoroughly thrashed. Sukaa himself remained aloft, sulking, and soon two other males joined in battle, white and black lightning across the horizon. All eyes were on the contest. No one watched the thwarted Khan-son still circling above.
No one saw him dive.
Buruu noticed him in the final seconds, dropping like a thunderbolt toward his brother’s head. He roared warning; Esh glanced up, flinched away—too late, too late. Sukaa crashed down atop him, flattening him on the stone, cracking bone. And raising his talons with a bloodcurdling shriek of rage, Sukaa struck at Esh’s unprotected face.
Blood spraying. Shrieks of pain. Roars of outrage. Drahk and Buruu both charged the coward, smashing him from their brother’s back. The Others joined in, and soon the top of the Bloodstone was a seething melee, flashing eyes and crimson sprays. Sukaa scrambled clear, torn and bleeding, taking to the wing. His pack followed, fleeing east, pursued for miles before the Everstorm bucks conceded the chase.
Back at the Bloodstone, Buruu and Drahk stood over their brother Esh, watching him struggle to his feet. His face was shredded, three bone-deep gouges running through his cheek. Where Esh’s eye had been, Buruu could see only a torn and bleeding hole.
My gods …
SUKAA. THAT WRETCH. IF NOT FOR HIM …
Was he punished?
THERE WAS NO LAW ABOUT BLOODSTONE CONTESTS, BUT ALL WHO FOUGHT KNEW THERE WERE LIMITS. WE WOULD LEAVE OUR SCARS, YES, BUT NOT LIKE THAT. ESH WAS CRIPPLED. NO FEMALE WOULD WANT HIM, EVEN IF HE COULD WIN CONTEST FOR A MATE HALF-BLIND. WHAT FUTURE DID HE HAVE?
So what did your father do?
… HE DID NOTHING, YUKIKO.
Buruu dipped his wings, brought them closer to the clouds.
HE DID NOTHING AT ALL.
* * *
She slept as best she could as night fell, binding her arms around his neck. It was freezing above the clouds, her throat raw, teeth chattering like idle servants. The storm swelled as they flew ever closer to Buruu’s birthplace, his past coiled and waiting, patient as vipers. And so she curled up against his warmth, listening to the rhythmic creak of his metal wings. The song of piston and gears made her think of Kin, standing in Kigen arena with hurt plain in his eyes as she accused him of betrayal.
“I gave you my word. I gave Buruu his wings. I would never betray you, Yukiko. Never.”
Never …
She thought of their kiss in the graveyard, that brief wonderful beginning, lips brushing soft as feathers against her own. And how it had all turned to rot in the end.
Somewhere inside, she supposed she should feel sad about it—what could’ve been. She should feel guilty for dragging Kin away from all he’d been, then running off to play hero and leaving him alone. But she thought of Daichi, probably boiled into fertilizer inside some inochi vat. She thought of Isao and the others who died during the Kigen raid, of Aisha in her machine bed, begging Michi to kill her. She thought of the bloodshed to come, thudding its way toward Kitsune-jō. And she grit her teeth and clenched her fists and whispered Kin’s name like a curse.
No matter how this ends, Kin. No matter who lives and who dies. I’ll see you pay for what you’ve done.
She dragged freezing knuckles across burning eyes.
Tenfold.
YOU SHOULD BE SLEEPING.
She blinked, scratched Buruu at the join between neck and shoulder, her fingers numb inside her gloves. She could see tiny crystals of frost on his feathers.
How far are we from the Everstorm?
CAN YOU NOT FEEL IT IN THE KENNING? CAN YOU NOT SIMPLY REACH OUT AND TOUCH THEM, EVEN AT THIS DISTANCE?
… I haven’t tried.
YOU STILL FEAR THIS THING. THIS POWER IN YOU.
Is that so wrong? I don’t understand it. My father never told me it could be like this. It’s all I can do to shut it out sometimes. I can feel it building behind the wall I’ve built. It hurts, even now, speaking to you like this. And I’m afraid of what will happen if I let it go. Will I hurt you?
She glanced down to her belly, hidden behind plates of reticulated iron.
Will I hurt them?
THE POWER COMES FROM THEM. FROM THE GODS. IT WILL NOT HARM THEM.
You sound like Michi. The gods don’t have anything to do with this.
YOU RIDE ON THE BACK OF A CHILD OF RAIJIN.
That’s nonsense. Your father was called Skaa. You’re just flesh. Meat and bone, like all of us. You’re no more the child of a deity than I am.
PRECISELY.
There are no gods in this story, Buruu. No hands reaching down from the heavens to help or hurt us. There’s just us. Us and the enemy.
YOU MAY THINK DIFFERENTLY WHEN YOU FEEL THEM.
Who?
NIAH. AAEL. FATHER AND MOTHER TO ALL DRAGONS. SLUMBERING IN SUSANO-Ō’S SONG. THE GODS ARE NO CLOSER TO THE WORLD THAN IN EVERSTORM, SISTER. SAVE PERHAPS IN THE HELL YOUR KIND HAS MADE OF SHIMA.
Well, I can’t feel them. We’re too far away.
I CAN FEEL THE POWER WITHIN YOU, YOU KNOW. IT IS YOURS IF YOU CHOOSE TO CLAIM IT. STORMDANCER. THE GREATEST OF THEM ALL, SHOULD YOU WISH IT.
I don’t.
YOU ARE AFRAID.
You would be too.
THERE IS NO SHAME IN FEAR, SAVE WHEN WE LET IT RULE US. I KNOW IT HURTS. I KNOW IT FRIGHTENS YOU. BUT THIS POWER WITHIN YOU MAY SHIFT THE TIDE THAT SWELLS AGAINST US.
You don�
��t know that.
I KNOW IT IS PART OF YOU. AND I KNOW IF YOU DO NOT MASTER IT, IT WILL EVENTUALLY MASTER YOU.
Yukiko sighed, dug her fingers into his fur.
TRY.
I don’t want to hurt—
JUST TRY.
… All right.
She breathed deep, feeling him inside her head, his heat entwined with the heat in her womb. And closing her eyes, she focused on the wall she’d built between herself and the force within. A dam of pure will, stemming the power in her mind. And focusing on the tiny crack she allowed the Kenning to leak past, she clenched her fists and stepped through.
A hurricane of fire. Blazing in her psyche with the heat of a thousand red suns. She could feel herself burning, scarlet warmth spilling down the lips of the flesh on the thunder tiger’s back. Fear gripped her, an abyss opening up beneath her feet and willing her down. Buffeted by flaming winds, breath toiling in her chest, she opened her eyes and watched the fire dance. Immolating, enveloping, like the heat of all the animals and people she’d seen when last she opened herself wide. But it was different now—not just the heat of the beast she rode, the children inside her, the thousand lives sparkling in the waves below her feet. And, eyes open and gleaming, tears streaming down her face, she recognized the firestorm for what it was.
The Lifesong of the World.
The rhythmic existence of all around her—not just individual sparks, but life itself. The pulse of creation’s totality. She could feel everything.
Everything.
Gods, it’s beautiful …
She reached out to the Everstorm ahead, the flares of heat nesting and soaring around mountains of burning stone. The serpentine trails of sea dragons cutting the waves, long echoes of themselves trailing behind them in blazing ribbons, circling above the living infernos coiled around the islands’ base. Vast and reptilian, ancient as moon and stars, slumbering in Susano-ō’s lullaby. Scales as thick as city walls. Hearts as vast as fortresses, pumping blood like oceans through veins wide as avenues. Power and majesty like she’d never imagined.
I feel them.
The smile on her lips made her want to cry.
Buruu, I feel everything.
Reaching back the way they’d come, fingertips brushing Shima’s edge. She could feel Kaiah, blurred in the impossible distance, sleeping fitfully beneath the eaves of Kitsune-jō. Little Tomo, curled up at Michi’s feet and dreaming of dinner. She reached over the fortress, felt the pulses and life of everything within it: samurai on the walls, servants rising before the sun, the old Daimyo in his study, Guildsmen locked in his dungeons, even the blinded madman chained in the deepest, darkest cell, still aching with lotus withdrawal.
The Inquisitor.
His eyes were open. Bloody holes, black as deadlands fissures, splitting wider every season, every earthquake, leading down, down to gods knew where.
Gods knew where.
He can see me.
The Inquisitor was smiling at her. Rigid as iron, stretched against his bonds, lips peeling back from stained teeth. Empty sockets where his eyes used to be, swathed in bloody gauze, and yet she knew beyond any doubt that he saw her, just as she saw him. With those sightless holes the color of deadlands fissures, leading down.
Down.
The little ones are already here, after all …
And beyond him …
“No!”
She closed it off, fled behind the wall of herself and slammed it shut, lips and chin crusted with frozen blood. Curling up against Buruu’s spine, shivering from nothing close to cold. The arashitora’s concern was obvious, but she kept him locked outside, fingertips tingling, head still ringing with the Lifesong and the memory of those sightless eyes staring right at her.
Through her.
Buruu began fretting, growling and whining, until finally she opened up a crack and allowed herself to leak into his mind; an old, familiar warmth, the heat of a fireside in a favored inn, nestling down in the cushions and knowing you are welcome. You are safe.
WHAT DID YOU SEE?
I don’t know.
She shook her head.
… Something awful.
WHAT?
Something’s coming. Not so close that I could see. But close enough to taste.
I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
Nor do I, Buruu. But we need to get to Everstorm and back to Shima. Quickly. All this, Hiro, Earthcrusher, everything we do …
She closed her eyes, tried to forget that bloody, sightless stare.
WE ARE A DAY AWAY. PERHAPS TWO.
We won’t have much time to convince the arashitora to come with us …
THERE WILL BE NO CONVINCING. ONLY COMMANDING.
No, Buruu. I told Michi and I’ll tell you the same. I’m not using the Kenning to force—
NOT YOUR COMMAND, SISTER.
Yukiko felt a faint growl building in his chest.
The thunder below was a rolling echo.
MINE.
24
WITHIN
Piotr stood in the muddy garden, heavy boots spattered black, eyes upturned to the clouds. He chewed his bone pipe, occasionally casting mournful looks into the empty honeyweed pouch inside his jacket. Face woven of scar tissue. Skin like a corpse.
The rains had ceased, but a freezing squall filled the skies, moaning amidst the rafters. Hana watched him for moments without count, burning curiosity finally bidding her speak.
“Piotr-san.”
The gaijin met her gaze with those eyes of ice-blue and blind-white, instantly turning them to the floor. He stepped back, gave her a confused bow, one hand on his heart.
“Zryachniye,” he murmured.
She stepped down into the garden, leaves and trees smeared with black rain. The glass-sharp stink of faint toxicity cut the air, a soft sear tickling her throat. Walking across the muddy ground to stand before him, she noted the way he refused to meet her gaze.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Is what for her talking?”
“My eye. I need to know what it means.”
A shrug. “Is meaning for she Zryachniye.”
“But what does that mean?”
“She sees.” He pointed to the sky. To his chest. To the earth. “She sees.”
“See what?”
“Cannot be saying. No one be knowing until she is for the waking.”
She frowned. “But I’m not asleep…”
“She is.” A smile deepened the scars on his cheeks. “She is sleeping, pretty girl. Eye still closed.”
“All right, so wake me up then.”
“Me?” The gaijin glanced up momentarily, something close to fear in that blue-blind gaze. “No, not for me to be the waking. She must stay for the white. Must be keeping for the self. Not me for her touching to be, no. Could not. Would never.”
Hana slumped down on a stone bench, clutching the hair at her temples. “Izanagi’s balls, I don’t know what the hells you’re saying…”
“Other Zryachniye.” Piotr knelt beside her in the muck, hand outstretched as if seeking permission to touch her. When she didn’t object, he held her fingertips, gentle as a child. “They wake you. They know. The others make she for seeing.”
“Others like me?”
“Like her.” Piotr dropped her hand as if it burned him. “They show. They know.”
“But there are no others like me.”
“The Imperatritsa, she Zryachniye. Many like pretty girl. And here.” The gaijin pointed east. “Coming here. Army would not making for war without them. They see. See for the many big things. See for the victory.”
“There are Zryachniye with the gaijin forces in Shima?”
“Must be.” A nod. “Must. Sister Katya, at least. Maybe for more.”
Hana licked her lips, reached beneath her collar to the leather thong hanging around her neck. The golden amulet her mother had given her years ago, set with the tiny stag and its crescent-shaped horns. Piotr’s eyes widened as she pul
led it out.
“Do you know what this means?”
“Where is she finding for this?”
“My mother gave it to me. My tenth birthday.”
Piotr stared, pity gleaming in the sapphire depths of his eye.
“She Mostovoi.” A nod, slow and heavy. “Your mother. She Mostovoi.”
“What is that?”
“Mostovoi is first house to meet Shima. Twenty years past. City of Mriss. Great city, where your family live. But gone.” A sigh. “All gone.”
“They took her as a slave.” The words tasted awful in her mouth, black and sharp and metallic. “Gave her to my father for saving the life of some samurai lord. He kept her. Hid her.” Memories coming in a barrage: her mother dead on the floor, her father beside her. The truth of what she was and how she’d come to be came down like a hammerblow. “Raped her.”
Her mother had never spoken of herself or her past. Never once in all those years. Maybe it hurt too much to remember. Maybe she was ashamed of what she’d become. Of the half-breed babies she’d been forced to bring into this hellhole.
Of us …
But that was self-pity speaking. Their mother had loved Yoshi. Loved her too. Why would she have given Hana this amulet, if not to instill some pride in what she was? If not to speak a truth words couldn’t shape? Too painful to voice?
“We deserve it, Piotr.” She scowled at the black mud under her feet. “Your people coming here. Killing and burning. Gods, part of me hopes they annihilate us.”
“Not her, no.” Piotr seemed genuinely appalled. He glanced at her hair, the blond roots clearly showing under the cuttlefish dye. “Kill for the Goddess-touched? No. Great shame. Black omens. Would never touch Zryachniye for the killing. Never.”
“Goddess-touched?” Hana looked up, heart beating quicker at the words.
“See.” He held out his hand. “Pretty girl.” Held another fist high in the sky. “Goddess.” He brought his hands together. “Zryachniye.” The gaijin pulled up his sleeve, traced the blue lines of his veins beneath his impossibly pale skin. “In her.”