The Last Stormdancer (the lotus war )

by Jay Kristoff

  I looked at Rahh, his eyes shining, strong and proud and fierce.

  And decided I could try.

  Behind us, the Lady Ami emerged from her cave, blinking in the wounded daylight, hand held aloft to the burning sun. She drifted down the hill, surrounded by rolling smoke, a wall of swords and spears. Her eyes met little Jun’s across the thicket of steel and fur and feathers, and she smiled despite the carnage about her, the horror she so clearly wore in the face of this dreadful slaughter.

  He smiled back, the ache in him spilling into me.

  Foolish boy, I thought.

  And there in the crowd of battered soldiers, his face crusted and daubed in the blood of his kin, stood her husband. Tatsuya, the mighty Bull of Shima, drenched to the elbows in victory, his face an ashen mask. The Lady picked her way through the bodies, holding the hem of her ruined gown. She stood before her husband, covering her fist and bowing low before him, her eyes downturned to the bloody ground.

  “Shōgun,” she said.

  All about her, the monkey-child soldiers did the same. Tatsuya’s bloodied victors. The broken remainder of Riku’s once-mighty legion. Bowing in unison, little Jun along with them, that same word spoken from a thousand lips.

  “Shōgun.”

  The Tiger Lord looked to the Lady Ami, his face grim. And as Jun’s poor heart wrenched inside his chest, Tatsuya put his arm around his bride, leaned close, and placed a bloody kiss upon her brow.

  * * *

  Look now in your moldy history books, monkey-child. Look now in your dusty scrolls. Read now of the glorious Kazumitsu Dynasty, and see how much those bleach-white pages speak of the Battle at Four Sisters. Do you see mention of Lotus Guild ships present there? Stormdancers? No?

  Do you wonder why?

  A month after the battle, a thin normality had descended on Shōgun Tatsuya’s court. His ascent onto the throne had been a gloried affair; a golden tiger mask upon his face, golden katana and wakizashi at his waist, a robe of bloody red trailing long behind him, and his wife beside it. As much pomp and ceremony as possible was mustered for the celebrations, considering the funeral arrangement that would coincide with the festivities. And in the hush thereafter, Tatsuya set about the quiet and bloody business of ensuring his dominion.

  As promised, the Shōgun showed clemency to Riku’s wife. The Lady Mai was permitted to dwell within a quiet corner of the Imperial Palace, her belly swelling with her dead husband’s child. First Lady Ami herself set about affairs befitting her station: the running of the Shōgun’s household, the entertaining of visiting dignitaries from the Phoenix, Dragon and Fox clans. She spent what little time she could with a pale, blind boy who lingered like a shadow at the court’s edge; ever uncertain of his place there. The boy in turn kept the company of her cats, looking out from behind those slitted eyes of green glass and seeing a world he recognized not at all.

  Since Tatsuya’s ascension, Ami had seen the Shōgun only fleetingly, and from a distance. Ever surrounded by ministers and courtiers. Ever kept at cold arm’s length. Still, she struggled on. As best she could. As best she knew how. It was nearly five weeks after the Battle at Four Sisters when she heard it—the news that drained the blood from her face, set her storming through the palace halls in search of her seldom-seen husband.

  After almost two hours and a dozen minders’ attempts to stave her off, she found him in meeting with his council of ministers and four representatives of the Lotus Guild. The men arrayed about a long table, crowded with tea services and sumptuous dishes, laughing and smiling, ruddy cheeks gleaming. The Guildsmen seated opposite, their glasses and plates empty, bloodred goggles fixing Lady Ami with dead-eyed stares as the herald begged forgiveness for the intrusion and announced her name to the assembly.

  The bottom half of the Shōgun’s face was covered by a golden breather fashioned like a tiger’s maw—apparently intended to keep the worsening fumes at bay. A kimono red as heartsblood was draped about his shoulders, embroidered with gold tigers. A golden breastplate and matching swords completed the imperious portrait.

  He raised one eyebrow, met Ami’s burning glare.

  “Honorable wife? What is the meaning of this?”

  “I beg forgiveness, most gracious Lord.” Ami kept the rage from her voice, her face impassive as a statue’s. “But I must speak with you on a matter most urgent.”

  Ami held up a crumpled sheet of rice paper in one white-knuckled fist—an edict marked with the Imperial Seal. The assembled ministers looked to their Lord in unison. The Shōgun’s brow darkened, his voice hollow and metallic behind the mask.

  “Do you not see me here in council—”

  “As I say, great Lord,” Ami interrupted. “A matter most urgent.”

  The Shōgun looked among his ministers, the Guildsmen. “You will excuse us, please.”

  Murmured acquiescence, the hiss and whine of pistons and the whisper of silken robes as the assemblage stood as one, bowed to their Lord, their Lady, and marched slowly from the room. Ami’s eyes were fixed on Tatsuya, the beginning of tears gathering in her lashes. Rage burning inside her, refusing to let them fall. The Shōgun’s voice was tinged with impatience.

  “You had best have fine reason for interrupting—”

  “I do not care about your bloody council, Tatsuya!” Ami crumpled the paper in her fist and hurled it at her husband’s chest. “Bad enough you leave our marriage bed empty, and my belly besides. But now you shame me like this?”

  Tatsuya glanced at the paper in his lap, back at his wife. “Shame you?”

  “You plan to adopt Mai’s child?” Ami hissed. “Make it your heir?”

  “Hai.” Tatsuya nodded. “If it is a boy. Until I have an heir of my own.”

  “And how in the name of the gods do you suppose that will happen, Tatsuya?”

  “I am wondering the same, beloved,” the Shōgun replied. “I hear rumor about the court you are barren. Unable to provide me with sons.”

  “You have not touched me in three years!”

  “Strange,” he mused. “I heard no mention of that amidst the whispers.”

  “What did I do to you?” Ami demanded. “Ever you have spurned me, but never have you sought to so openly disgrace me. And now I find you in council with the Lotus Guild? You vowed vengeance against them! Have you forgotten they tried to murder me? Your own wife?”

  “The Guild leaders who ordered such dishonorable aggression have been brought to justice. Their heads delivered to me personally. And my vengeance? Already I bring them under my heel. I have commanded their chi-production be brought under Shōgunate control. Their refineries will be constructed in each clan capital now, where they can be monitored by my officials. No longer will they practice their arts out in the wilderness beyond my sight or knowledge. It is time they learned to whom they owe allegiance.”

  “You bring their refineries into our cities?” Ami was incredulous. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

  Tatsuya stood slowly, hand on his sword. His scowl growing black as storm clouds above the tiger mask. “Mind your tongue, honorable wife. You speak to your Shōgun now.”

  “What of the sickness? The blacklung? The arashitora fought beside you because they thought you meant to expel the Guild! Unravel it! You gave Jun your word!”

  “I recall making no promises to the beast-speaker.”

  “Beast-speaker?” Ami blinked. “He is a Stormdancer, Tatsuya! Perhaps the last of them!”

  “Indeed? Then where is his thunder tiger?”

  Ami fell silent, incredulity and rage choking her to stillness.

  “The Guild has some intriguing interpretations of holy scripture regarding the nature of those who speak with animals.” Tatsuya crossed the wooden floor, heavy boots ringing upon the boards. Towering over his wife now, staring down at her with cold, black eyes. “The Book of Ten Thousand Days is quite clear upon the topic, when read in a certain light.”

  “… A certain light?”

  “Hai,”
Tatsuya nodded. “The book also speaks clearly on the matter of wives. The nature of deference. Obedience. I suggest you peruse it, before next you consider it prudent to burst in upon one of my council sessions like some moon-touched peasant-child…”

  “What has become of you, Tatsuya? Always you and I had our differences, but now…” Ami shook her head. “It seems I know you not at all…”

  The Shōgun stared from behind his breather, golden tiger fangs bared and gleaming.

  “Did you ever?”

  * * *

  She found him in the garden, his thin pine walking stick in hand. He stood in the shade of a twisted maple, leaves turning gray in the stink and slow exhaust haze. Every day, it seemed to be growing just a fraction worse. A few Guild ships now rumbling in the skies above Kigen, smudging the clouds with thick plumes of blue-black smoke. The haze of motor-rickshaw thickening in the streets, beggars coughing in the alleyways, the taste of lotus leaking slowly into the water. The food. The air. Everything.

  “Jun-san.”

  He turned toward the sound of her voice, and she saw he had tears in his eyes.

  “Jun-san, what is wrong?”

  “I heard them crying.” He pointed to the gardens beyond the palace verandah. “I came to see. On days such as this, I wish I were truly blind.”

  Ami saw a clutch of servants gathered around a tall stack of bamboo cages. The little prisons were filled with sparrows, all hues of the rainbow, screeching their distress. The servants reaching through the bars, one by one, plucking the birds out and setting to with wickedly sharp snips; clipping the sparrow’s wings as they struggled and screeched.

  “The ones who could fly away already did.” Jun’s voice was that of a man with a hollowed-out chest. “But the servants told me the Lady Mai enjoys their song. The Shōgun had hunters in the north catch them, bring them here.” He looked around the graying gardens as if he could truly see. “To die. Singing.”

  Jun frowned, pressed his hand to his brow.

  “I can hear them. All of them. The sparrows. The seagulls. The cats and dogs and rats. It is getting worse. I cannot stand it. It was not supposed to be this way. I was supposed to save the world…”

  “Come inside, Jun-san.” Ami put her arm about his waist, led him up to the verandah. “Come with me.”

  They walked together, Jun’s stick tapping upon the boards. Servants bowing in deference to the Lady, but not the boy. Lingering stares. Puzzled, even. They had not been told of the Battle at Four Sisters. The minstrels did not sing of the Stormdancer Jun who came to their Shōgun’s aid. And they wondered who he was; this confidante of the First Lady. This boy she spent so much time with, when instead she should be furnishing their Lord with sons.

  They found an empty room in the training halls—a dojo filled with wooden dummies, wooden swords, wooden armor. A hollow facade, just as their lives had become.

  “We should not be alone,” Jun said. “It is unwise.”

  She ran her hand across his cheek, gentle as first snows. Watching him shiver.

  “I miss you,” she breathed.

  Stepping closer, her body pressed against his, bleeding with want.

  “I know myself a fool for saying so. But I cannot forget.”

  Jun reached up with trembling hands, running soft fingertips over her face as if to see her. She sighed, eyelids fluttering closed, his touch making her thighs ache. Her breath coming faster, his fingers across her lashes, brushing her lips, the smooth curve of her throat. Lunging forward, her mouth seeking his, her arms about him as he crushed her to him, the press of his lips making her shiver. Gods, she wanted him.

  Need you.

  Breathe you.

  “We are both fools, then,” he sighed.

  Running her fingers through his hair, drifting apart with reluctance, her eyes fixed on his sightless stare. All about her was lies, but this, here in her arms. He was real. When all else was shadows and spiders.

  “There is something wrong with Tatsuya,” Ami whispered. “He plots with the Guild rather than punishing them. He speaks of you…” She shook her head. “I fear you are in danger here, Jun. You should go. Back to Koh. Away from this palace. The serpents within.”

  “I sense the truth of it. There are eyes ever upon me here. I feel them crawling on my skin, though I have no eyes to see them.”

  “Not even Whisper and Silk?” Ami smiled. “Those cats seem to spend more time in your company than mine. I have not seen the ungrateful little devils in days…”

  “I have not seen them, either,” Jun frowned. “Now that you make mention…”

  Ami pulled back from his embrace, dread unspooling in her belly. “You do not suppose—”

  Jun put his finger to her lips, head tilted. Expression paling. Breath catching in his lungs.

  “… There are soldiers coming,” he said. “Many.”

  “You must go, Jun,” Ami said. “Go now. Quickly.”

  “Who says they come for me?”

  “Tatsuya would not harm me. He would not dare. But the way he spoke of you … you must go, Jun, now!”

  A smile on his lips. Melting her heart.

  “I cannot die today, remember?”

  He grasped his cane, drew forth his gleaming blade.

  “It seems I have not saved the world yet…”

  The doors slammed open, a dozen samurai in iron armor stomping into the room, studded war clubs in their hands. Their faces covered by iron masks, crafted into the likes of oni demons straight from the Yomi hells; all twisted snarls and upturned tusks. Behind them, four Guildsmen in their suits of leather and brass, strange devices clutched in their hands; hollow tubes making a faint sloshing sound, cylindrical hoppers feeding into long, smooth barrels.

  “Kitsune Jun,” said the samurai captain. “By order of Shōgun Tatsuya, you are to surrender your arms and come with us. You are under arrest.”

  “For what crime?” Lady Ami demanded.

  “Impurity,” hissed a Guildsman.

  Ami ignored the Lotusman, a challenging stare fixed on the lead samurai. “Kitsune Jun saved your Shōgun’s life, Captain. Tatsuya would not even be alive, let alone sitting the Four Thrones if not for him. This is the courtesy we show now in the Shōgun’s palace?”

  “I follow my orders, First Lady,” the samurai replied. “I humbly suggest you take issue up with your Lord and husband.”

  “This is madness. This is—”

  “Enough,” rasped the Lotusman. “Take the abomination into custody.”

  The samurai reached out to seize Jun’s arm. The boy backed away, three steps, raising his blade into guard position. His eyes were closed, head titled slightly, a gentle smile curling his lips. His voice soft as new-forged steel.

  “I warn you, honorable soldiers, all,” he said. “If you stand against me, you stand against the gods themselves. It was spoken by my—”

  A flurry of hisses from the raised barrels clutched in the Guildsmen’s hands. Ami cried out, Jun shoving her aside as whistling projectiles filled the space between them; tiny needles set with syringes, filled with gleaming black liquid. Jun moved, his sword a blur, rolling and swaying, slicing one, two, three from the air. The samurai lunged, war clubs raised, closing about the boy as he swayed in the hail of fire. Jun struck, swift as quicksilver, slicing through the join at one man’s elbow, stepping behind another as the Lotusmen fired again, the samurai’s back sparking under the needle flak.

  “Stop this,” Ami roared. “I am the First Lady of this Shōgunate, and I command you to stop this!”

  Jun struck again, pushing his blade through the eye socket of one samurai’s mask, the soldier screaming and falling to his knees. Jun vaulted up off the man’s shoulders, flipping himself overhead, landing amidst the Lotusmen. His blade a whistling, crimson blur, weaving in the air to the tune of murder, blood spraying in haphazard patterns across the dojo walls. One Lotusman collapsed screaming, two more forever silenced. But as the fourth fell back before Jun’s onslau
ght, he let loose a last volley from his weapon, one of the tiny needles striking the boy in his shoulder, burying itself to the hilt.

  Ami cried out, drew the tantō hidden in the small of her back. She stabbed the Lotusman in the throat, a gush of crimson warmth flooding over her hands, painted upon her lips. Bubbling nausea in her belly as the Guildsman fell, clutching the spray at his neck. The floor slippery beneath her feet. The first man she had ever killed. Gods …

  Jun turned back to the samurai, the figures surrounding him now. His chest heaving, frown forming between his brows, shaking his head as if to clear it. Blade dripping gore. Plucking the empty needle from his shoulder. Swaying on his feet now. Ami crying out as the samurai lunged.

  He fended them off for a moment or two more, opening up another at his throat. Yet his footsteps were unsteady. Head drooping. Shoulders slumping. Sword hanging limp in his grip. Ami cried out, stepping into the fray only to be seized by iron hands, flung into a corner. She hit the wall hard, breath knocked loose, blood on her tongue. A club stuck Jun’s sword arm, breaking it clean, the boy crying out as he fell to his knees. His sword clattering to the dojo floor as another blow crashed across his shoulders, splayed him flat upon the boards. Clenched fists rising and falling, Ami trying to catch breath enough to scream. Jun falling still, beaten senseless, head lolling on his neck as they slapped manacles about his wrists. Hauling him from the room now, supported between two hulking iron figures, his bare feet trailing through pools of cooling blood. Leaving her there, clutching her breast. Staring at his sword, gleaming in the crimson puddle, now as useless as his certainty. His prophecy. His destiny.

  Weeping. Cursing. Hair in ragged curtains over her eyes. And dragging herself across the floor, through the blood, she clutched the blade, the hollow scabbard, hauling herself to her feet.

  Husband.

  She had to find Tatsuya …

  * * *

  Three figures in a shadowed hallway, lit by the scarlet light of flickering lanterns.

  The first, a son of the great Kazumitsu Dynasty, son of Sataro-no-miya, victor of the Battle of Four Sisters. Absolute Lord of all he surveyed. Shōgun of the Shima Imperium. Unquestioned. Unchallenged. Untouchable.