by Jay Kristoff
What did the old tales call a group of thunder tigers?
“Pack” seemed too simple. Too soulless and tiny to describe the sight. Wingspans as broad as sky-ships, cruel talons and hooked beaks, feathers of pristine white and darkest jet. Fierce and brilliant and beautiful, descending like hammers and flawless blades of folded steel—a sight no one had witnessed in over a century.
A flight?
A host?
A cloud?
No.
She shook her head, held her blades aloft as she roared.
Not a cloud.
And all around, all across the brightening skies, the thunder tigers roared in answer.
A godsdamned storm.
40
FLOWERS FALLEN
“Oh,” Hana smiled. “Forgiveness, please.”
Katya smiled in return, ran glass-smooth fingertips over Hana’s cheek. And reaching up, she pulled the goggles down from her eyes.
Firelight gleamed bright, dazzling after the gloom.
And then everything came undone.
Katya’s eyes widened, lips peeling from sharpened teeth. Hana thought the woman was going to bite her until she saw tears welling in her eyes, pulling back as if horrified to touch her. The Holy Mother stared across the flames, despair and outrage mixed on her face.
“What is it?” Hana asked, looking among the Zryachniye. “What’s wrong?”
The Mother spoke words Hana couldn’t comprehend, anguish in her eyes. Katya was climbing to her feet, face darkening in fury, Morcheban falling from her lips in leaden mouthfuls.
“What’s wrong?” Hana wailed. “For the love of the gods what is it?”
Mother Natassja drew a curved, gleaming knife from within her furs. Hana tensed as the woman stood, reaching out to Kaiah’s mind, just a heartbeat shy of screaming for help. But it was clear from the Mother’s expression she meant no violence, only sadness in her eyes as she limped around the fire, holding up the flat of the blade so the girl could see her own reflection.
- ARE YOU WELL? -
Oh gods …
- WHAT IS WRONG? HANA? -
Trembling fingers stretching up to her face, her reflection doing the same. The leather strip, the pale skin, the wisps of burned blond. But beneath her eyebrow, where she should have seen an iris glittering like new rose quartz, there was only muddy brown.
Her eye had ceased to glow.
Katya stormed from the tent, a flurry of black snow tumbling inside as she tore the flap away. Hana took the blade from Natassja, pawed at her cheek, rubbed her eye, silently pleading for some explanation, some word to make sense of a world that suddenly made none at all. The old woman knelt beside her, and taking Hana’s hand, she whispered in the Shiman tongue. Three words that sent the ground falling away from Hana’s knees.
“No man,” she said. “Zryachniye. No man.”
“Gods, no…” Hana breathed.
“Spoiled.”
She slipped into the glass-smooth warmth behind Kaiah’s eyes, crying warning. The thunder tiger was on her feet, hackles rising, ready to charge into the tent and tear all asunder.
No not me, Kaiah! Akihito!
Hana forced the arashitora to turn, looking toward Katya as she stalked toward the big man. She saw the woman reach behind her, draw one of those awful sickle-shaped blades. Akihito strode toward her, warclub raised, demanding explanation. Kaiah roared warning, began bounding forward, lightning crawling across her feathers. Too far away.
Far too late.
And as Katya whirled in place, slicing Akihito from ear to ear, Hana started screaming.
* * *
Aleksandar was climbing to his feet as Katya cut the big man’s throat, her face twisted in fury, those razored teeth gleaming. And then the Zryachniye was screaming, screaming at the top of her lungs for the Marshal, for warriors, to arms, to arms.
“Sergei!” she shrieked. “We are betrayed!”
The gryfon roared, turning on the command tent and charging into the dark where Hana and Natassja were sequestered. Aleksandar drew his lightning hammer, engaged the current, roaring at the top of his lungs as static electricity crackled up his arm.
“Protect the Holy Mother!”
He sprinted toward the tent, heard the warhounds baying within. A dozen warriors reached the tent before him, charging into the dark, now thick with screaming. Not just Hana, but the guttural, choking cries of men meeting their deaths—a bubbling choir of battlefields and slaughter Aleksandar had heard a hundred times before. A corpse flew back through the canvas wall, knocking him down, the body torn near in half. Thunder rolled, the tent collapsed, roof bending inward as the crunch of snapping timbers rose above pitched screams. Soldiers cried out in alarm, hundreds more charging the tent now, hammers and swords drawn.
Another thunderclap, the roar of a typhoon and shriek of tearing sails. A white silhouette burst through the tent roof, thick canvas shredding as if it were silk. The gryfon tore into the sky with Hana astride it, the pair painted in blood. She had a Zryachniye blade clutched in one hand, daubed red, the beast roaring in outrage as arrows rained around them.
Katya was stalking toward him, bloodied knife in hand as he pulled himself free of the sundered corpse.
“Katya, what in the Goddess’ name is happening?”
The woman pushed past him into the tent, not saying a word. As Aleksandar stepped into the ruins, she started keening, stumbling to the firepit’s edge, falling to her knees beside the corpse laying amidst a mound of others. Warriors of House Ostrovska, Goraya, Dmitriyev, Zubkov, soldiers of the Imperatritsa, all. But their loss was nothing, nothing compared to that of the woman lying dead by the smoldering coals—Mother Natassja, savaged to death by the warhounds lying dead all around her. Two dogs remained, blinking and comatose in a corner, muzzles smeared in gore.
“What did she do?” Katya moaned, rocking back and forth. “Goddess, what did she do?”
“What did you do?” Aleksandar demanded. “You killed Akihito! What—”
The Sister whirled on him, eyes catching the lightning above. “You dare speak his name to me? One who defiled a daughter of the Goddess?”
Aleksandar swallowed. “He…”
“We are betrayed, Aleksandar. Your niece is despoiled. Plucked by the hands of man.”
“The girl is still my blood. She is still—”
“She has slain the Holy Mother!”
“You slew her lover! By the Dark, what did you think would—”
“Aleksandar Mostovoi!”
The bellow cut through the red haze clouding Aleksandar’s eyes. He turned and saw Marshal Sergei standing in the tent flap, horror and rage scrawled across his face. “What in the name of the Living Goddess happened here?”
“We are betrayed, Marshal,” Katya said. “The Mostovoi girl and her beast have slain Mother Natassja.”
“After Sister Katya slew her lover,” Aleksandar growled.
“Lover?” Ostrovska frowned. “No Goddess-touched may—”
“The girl has lost her flower,” Katya hissed. “Left unattended by her fool uncle in a den of bastards and liars. She can no longer bear the Goddess’ blessings. All is come to ruin. The tie binding us to the Shimans is undone.”
Aleksandar turned to his commander, begging for calm, “Marshal, she is still born of both our lands, she is still—”
“Order your troops to attack, Marshal,” Katya spat. “Rally your men and destroy every one of those filthy slaver pigs.”
“And what of the iron behemoth?” Aleksandar demanded. “How shall we topple it? With prayers? I beg pardon, Sister, but you are not a strategist, and not a soldier.”
“I am Zryachniye!” Katya stepped up to Aleksandar, shouting into his face. “I am the Imperatritsa’s word made flesh now Mother Natassja is dead, and I say attack!”
Aleksandar shook his head, stared at the Marshal. Sergei licked his lips, spat hard. In the background, they could hear the chaos of battle, engines, shuriken fir
e and screams. The slavers were tearing each other to pieces. A barrage of thunderclaps sounded overheard, a multitude of roars filling the skies. Aleksandar squinted westward through the torn roof, spying a dozen black and white shapes descending from the clouds, sowing slaughter and flame. Shiman ships were dropping from the skies, fire reaching up to kiss the lightning.
The gryfons had arrived. Their stormdancer, Yukiko.
What price will we pay for the murder of her friend?
Sergei sighed, gave Katya a small bow.
Aleksandar’s heart sank down to his toes.
“As the Imperatritsa wills,” the Marshal said.
And turning to Aleksandar, he gave the order to attack.
* * *
“I can feel them, you realize.”
The First Bloom lifted one clawed hand, tapping his brow. “Up here.”
Daichi scanned the dark, taking in the figures of a dozen other Inquisitors around the chamber, silent and black as shadows. He kept his breathing steady, stance relaxed. Though he was unarmed, there was a time when his punches could smash cedar boards, his kicks crush brick. Just because he had no weapons didn’t mean he was weaponless …
“Feel who?” he said.
“Every member of the Guild,” Tojo hissed. “The Lotusmen on their ironclads. Kensai in his little behemoth. The Inquisitors in this room, uncertainty battling with their faith. They wonder about me, you know. If I am truly … here. Where all this is heading. Do you not?”
Tojo stared around the room, at the shadows breathing their plumes of smoke. Hollow laughter spilled from his tentacled maw. The mechabacii clustered around his throne chittered.
“I could even feel your friend, Daichi-san. Little Kin. Before Kensai tore the mechabacus from his chest. I quite enjoyed it, lurking on the cusp of those thoughts. Such an oddity, that one. The Inquisition expects great things of him, when I am gone.”
Daichi could hear motion around him; men shifting their weight, as if discomfited.
“It would shame any of them to admit it, but they are glad it will be soon. I frighten them, you see. I see that which they do not. Cannot. Will not.”
Daichi was calculating the distance to the First Bloom, the unfathomable machines he could use to vault up the throne, reaching out and seizing that helm in his hands, twisting …
Gather your strength. Keep him talking.
“You can feel them in your head?” Daichi stifled a small cough. “Every Guildsman plugged into one of those accursed machines? How do you stand the noise?”
“With difficulty. But I have been doing this for … quite some time.”
“How long?”
“Centuries? Something akin … I used to tally the years when I was younger. It kept me sane. A countdown to rebirth. Until I realized the truth we all should know.”
“Truth?”
“What Will Be, Will Be.”
“Fatalism.” Daichi smothered a cough. “I know how that feels.”
“Every man who has seen the face of his death does. You and I are very much alike.”
“You have seen your death also?”
A slow, creaking nod. “When I was a young man. When first we used the lotus sacrament to see the Truth. My lungs full of smoke and my eyes full of tears.”
“And you have lived with that knowledge for two hundred years?”
“Lived?” Mirthless laughter. “I would not call it that. I have not lived since before the rise of the Shōgunate. Since the twenty-four clans were consumed by four zaibatsu. Since my family, my wife, my people were annihilated by the Kitsune. Serpents, crushed underheel.”
“I do not understand…”
“You will,” Tojo nodded. “We talk now for a time. We will feel like old friends before we speak our last to each other. Before you do what it is you do.”
“… And what is that?”
“Ah, the eternal question. ‘Why am I here?’”
“And?” Daichi frowned. “Why am I here?”
Tojo tilted his head, the smile plain in his voice.
“To bring my death, of course.”
* * *
“You would be the Kagé, I presume?”
Kaori stood stone-still, wakizashi poised at the leader’s throat. The False-Lifer’s silver razors were a hairbreadth from her jugular, carotid, eyes. Gleaming in the garish light, the echoes of dripping chi filling the spaces between each breath.
“You are the rebellion,” she said.
“But a few,” the woman replied. “We are legion.”
“As are we.”
“I count but three.”
“Count again.”
“You are the Kagé who remained in the Iishi.” The False-Lifer glanced at Botan and Maro. “The ones who refused to follow Yukiko to Yama. She told us about you.”
“I’m certain she did.”
“You came up through the pipeline system? I am impressed at your valor.”
“Coming from one such as you, that means absolutely nothing.”
“My name is Misaki.”
“I care as little for your name as your praise.”
“You would be Kaori? Yukiko told us of the betrayal. The one called Kin. Not all of us are like him.”
“You all look the same to me.”
“We all share similarities, it seems. Or are you here to admire the view?”
“We are here to burn the Guild’s heart out. To destroy this pit and all within.”
“Then we have common purpose. So why do we have blades poised at one another’s throats?”
Long silence, filled with distant claxons, rhythmic drips from chi-sodden clothes. Breath burning in her lungs, sweat in her eyes, blurring the world and all within. Misaki simply stared, blades hovering at Kaori’s throat, the breath of her brethren rasping through the bellows on their backs. The breath of living men. Living, thinking, feeling …
“Kaori…” Maro cleared his throat, his voice soft in the dark. “Perhaps there is wisdom in alliance. The explosives they planted speaks to the truth of their words.”
“Why are you here?” Kaori whispered to the Guildswoman. “Why are you here really?”
“To destroy this house.”
“That is a purpose. Not a reason.”
Misaki stared back with those bloody eyes, her mask expressionless. When she finally spoke, her voice burned with a passion Kaori could scarce believe.
“I have a daughter. Suki. Her father is gone. Dead. But his last words to me were a plea to build a world in which our daughter might live free. To dance in the light with the sun upon her skin. He died for that dream. And I will die to see it done, if needs be. There is nothing I would not do to keep her safe. To see her breathe the free air. I would die a thousand deaths to see my daughter live one lifetime in happiness.”
Kaori blinked in the dark, a sting rising in the corners of her eyes. Misaki’s voice, her father’s thoughts. The truth of what he’d done. What he’d sacrificed for her. Why he’d chosen. Not Kin. Not any of them. His choice and his alone.
Misaki touched Kaori’s wakizashi, gently pushing it aside. “The lotus must burn, Kagé.”
“Burn,” echoed her companions.
Kaori sighed, held out her hand, her voice a whisper.
“Burn.”
* * *
’Thopters lurched into the air, swaying like drunkards in a howling wind. Drums pounded, siege-crawlers roared, lightning crackling down their treads and arcing into black snow. And with howls of rage and bloodlust rolling up and down the line, flags of a dozen houses hoisted in the poisoned air, the gaijin army charged down the hillside toward the city of Yama.
A solitary figure remained.
Piotr stood in the black snow, staring at Akihito’s body, the blood still steaming in the chill. It was strange how such a big man could suddenly seem so tiny, all the power in him, all the strength reduced to an empty bag of slack meat and tumbled bones.
The gaijin winced, kneeling beside the big man’s corps
e, the metal at his knee creaking. Reaching out, he folded Akihito’s arms across his chest, closed his sightless eyes. Head bowed, he kissed his fingertips, pressed them to the big man’s brow, whispering a prayer.
“Good-bye my friend,” he sighed. “Am so sorry.”
41
THE SHAPE OF LOSS
Yukiko could feel them all. Every one. Waiting in the burning fire beyond the wall in her mind. The arashitora, black and white, swarming in the air around her. Her Khan beneath her, fierce and proud and sharp as swords. Cloudwalkers and Iron Samurai clashing aboard sky-ships. Corvette pilots dogfighting through blinding fumes. Kitsune soldiers fighting and dying to defend their home. Tora soldiers fighting and dying to avenge their Shōgun. Gaijin warriors charging down the hill to avenge their fallen Mother. All of them, tumbling and burning and seething, one flame burning brighter than the rest. A flame that touched the Kenning just like she did, sending ripples across flaming water.
Hana. Grief-stricken. Furious. Screaming as she and Kaiah weaved among the gaijin rotor-thopters, tearing them from the sky.
Blood dripping from her nose, pain flaring hot at the base of her skull, Yukiko reached out through the storm, crossing a sea of death and pain. Gentle as she could, she reached inside the girl’s head, saw the source of her heartache: Akihito lying motionless on the frozen ground.
Oh gods, no …
Grief seized Yukiko’s heart, almost stilled it. It was a physical pain. A punch in the chest with jagged, frozen knuckles. One more piece of herself lost in this fucking war. One more person she loved taken away. Aisha. Kasumi. Her father. Now Akihito too. Gods above. His huge crushing hugs lifting her off the ground. His bad poetry. His clumsy, big brother hands, encircling her own. Gone now. Blood-slicked. Cold and still.
She reached out into the storm of talons and feathers all around her, filling them with her rage. Flooding their inputs with bitter, broken-glass grief, the desire for revenge burning white and blinding. They roared in reply, deafening and furious.