by Jay Kristoff
Courage.
“I just want you to know…”
Strength.
“… I missed you.”
Love?
Yukiko blinked, opened her mouth to speak. She felt rooted to the spot, stomach lurching, heart thundering in her chest and echoing the storm above.
With a small huffing sound, Buruu stalked off into the forest.
“Kin, I…”
“It’s all right. There’s no rule saying you need to feel the same way I do.”
“… I don’t know how I feel. I haven’t had time to even think about it.”
“If you felt something, you’d know it. You wouldn’t need to think.”
“Kin, the last person I thought I loved tried to murder me.” The words tasted copperish, the bleed of an old wound reopening. The first boy she’d ever loved. The first she’d ever …
“I’d never hurt you,” he said. “Never betray you. Never.”
“I know that.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pressure you. I just … wanted you to know.”
“I care about you.” She took his hands, stared until he met her eyes. “I really do, Kin. I worried about you. We looked for you, every chance we got. And you being here now … it helps me breathe. You can’t know how much.”
“I know it.” He squeezed her fingers so hard it hurt. “You mean everything to me. Everything I’ve done. All of it. You’re the reason. The first and only reason.”
The forest seethed about them as they stood, fingers entwined. She could feel the heat of his skin radiating through rain-soaked cloth, the strength in his hands. He ran his thumbs across her knuckles, and some part of her wanted to feel those hands on her, to feel a warm body pressed against her again, to feel something other than the pain and hate growing inside her like a cancer. Butterflies lurched about her stomach, tongue dry, palms slick. His lips were parted, short, shallow breaths, water beading on his skin. He moved, almost imperceptibly closer, and she felt the uncertainty inside slip for just a second, washed away by gentle rain. The noise of the world felt a thousand miles away.
She moved to meet him, closed her eyes.
His lips were soft, a feather-light brush against her own, gentle as falling petals. She sighed as they touched hers, lighting a fire inside her, surging bright. He was wonderfully clumsy, hands fluttering at his sides like wounded birds, almost losing his balance as she pressed tight against him. She could feel the pulse inside his chest, his mouth opening to hers, breathing in her sighs. Her body waking as if from a dreamless sleep, frissons of light tingling across her skin. Feeling for the first time in weeks. Feeling.
Alive.
She pressed his hands against her, taut muscle beneath her fingertips. Something prowled behind her eyes, something forged in lightning and blinding rain, hungry and hot, bidding her dig her fingers into his skin, to bite at his lip. Her heartbeat was thunder, her blood rising like a tide, the uncertainty, the anger, the voices of the forest, all of it at last falling still—
“Stormdancer!”
The cry was high-pitched, urgent, shattering the moment into a thousand glittering pieces. She blinked, pulled away, trying to catch her fleeing breath. Looked toward the voice, the tempo of feet pounding dead leaves.
“Stormdancer!”
A boy dashed into the graveyard, almost slipping in his haste, red-faced and breathless. Stopping before her, he bent double, gasping, pawing the sweat from his eyes. He was a few years older than she, heavyset, an askew jaw and mincemeat face, as if someone had tried to bash it in when he was a child.
“Takeshi?” Yukiko put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “What is it?”
The boy shook his head, hands on his knees as he gasped like a landed fish. It took a few moments to regain breath enough to talk. He looked as if he’d been running from Lady Izanami, the Dark Mother herself.
“Scouts on the western rise … One of the pit traps…”
Yukiko felt dread stab her gut. As if bidden, Buruu crashed into the clearing in a flurry of dead leaves, hackles raised, the air filled with static electricity. His eyes were bright, pupils dilated around slivers of gleaming amber. The western rise was close to the Black Temple, where she and the arashitora had fought a legion of pit demons in the summer. If the creatures were probing the rise near the pit traps, that meant they were creeping closer to the village, and just one of the Dark Mother’s children loose in the lower woods …
“Gods, they caught an oni?” Yukiko asked.
“No. Worse than a demon.”
Takeshi spit on the dead leaves at his feet, shaking his head.
“Another Guildsman.”
* * *
She was conscious of Kin’s arms about her waist for the entire flight, strong hands and gentle grip. Soft breath tickling her neck. Warm as firelight. Her headache returning like a faithful hound, broken glass grinding at the base of her skull.
Clasping Buruu’s neck, she tried to ignore Kin’s hands on her hips, the play of muscle across his chest as he leaned against her. She entwined her fingers in the arashitora’s feathers, felt for the heat of his mind, growing more jagged and bright with each passing moment.
You’re awfully quiet.
ABOUT WHAT?
Don’t play coy with me.
YOU CHIDE ME FOR PLAYING COY. AFTER TELLING THE BOY YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW YOU FEEL, THEN LUNGING FOR HIS TONSILS A HEARTBEAT LATER.
I … He makes me feel something, Buruu. Something I think I need right now.
MMN.
Well, go on then. Get it off your chest.
The thunder tiger tossed his head, swooped around a castle of tangled sugi trees, wisps of lightning crackling at his wingtips. She could feel him in her mind, loud as the thunderstorm gathering overhead, stubborn as the mountains around them, reminding her so much of her father she could almost smell pipe smoke. She remembered the beast she’d roamed the Iishi with, the arrogance and pride, the fury coiled inside him. He’d been an animal then. Clever, yes, but still driven by instinct rather than conscious thought. Now he was more; ferocious cunning layered with human faculties for judgment. And she could feel the urge to speak his piece bubbling inside him like a wellspring, until finally he couldn’t stop himself.
I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOUR KIND. WITH ARASHITORA, THE FEMALE CHOOSES THE MATE WITH THE STRONGEST WINGS, THE SHARPEST CLAWS. THE MALE HAS NO CHOICE AT ALL. HE IS SIMPLY A SLAVE TO INSTINCT AND THE FEMALE’S SCENT.
Well, that sounds awful.
IT IS SIMPLE. YOU HUMANS. ALL THIS SIGHING AND SPITTLE SWAPPING. YOUR COUPLING IS COMPLICATED BEYOND ALL NEED OR REASON.
Gods, please don’t use that word …
MY OTHER OPTIONS ARE LESS POLITE.
Because you’re usually a paragon of courtly manners?
The thunder tiger harrumphed, swooped lower so his belly brushed the tree line. Gentle rain began falling from the storm-washed skies.
TELL ME. THE MASHING OF YOUR FACES TOGETHER …
Kissing.
IT DEMONSTRATES AFFECTION.
Yes.
AND THE TONGUES?
… What?
HONESTLY, WHAT PURPOSE DOES THAT SERVE?
How under heaven did you …
SISTER, YOU WERE PROJECTING YOUR THOUGHTS OVER THE ENTIRE FOREST. IT WAS LIKE HIGH SPRING OUT THERE. A SWEATY TIDAL WAVE OF BARELY REPRESSED ADOLESCENT LUST DROWNING ALL BEFORE IT.
Gods, really?
THE MONKEYS IN PARTICULAR SEEMED … EXCITED.
She pressed her fists to her temples, glanced over her shoulder at Kin.
WELL, PERHAPS EXCITED IS THE WRONG WORD …
Yes, Buruu, I understand. Thank you.
TITILLATED?
Buruu …
ENGORGED, PERHAPS?
Oh my GODS, stop!
The treetops parted like water as they descended through the canopy, showers of severed green tumbling earthward in their wake. Away from the glare of the garish day, Yukiko pulled her goggles down around her throat,
ran her hand across her eyes.
You could really hear what I was feeling?
LOUD AS THUNDER. AS IF I FELT IT MYSELF.
She chewed her lip, listening to the faint cacophony on the edge of her subconscious.
The Kenning has never been like this before, Buruu. Your thoughts are louder than I’ve ever heard. If I listen, I can hear every animal for miles. All those impulses and lives stacked atop one another. It’s deafening.
YOUR FATHER NEVER SPOKE TO YOU OF THIS?
He never even told me he had the gift. But, he drowned his Kenning in liquor and smoke. Maybe this is why? Maybe as we get older, it gets louder? Or maybe breaking Yoritomo’s mind did something to break mine?
She sighed, ran her fingers through his feathers.
I don’t understand any of this, brother …
They circled past a copse of maidenhairs, knotted branches and shovel-tip leaves laden with rain. The soft scent of green rot entwined with the perfume of deepening autumn, the leaden smell of the storm above. Thunder rumbled somewhere distant, as if the clouds were great ironclads, splitting and burning and tumbling from the skies. Yukiko could hear the echoes of old screams, faint and metallic, somewhere inside her head. The humidity was unbearable, her body aching, sweat mixing with rain on her skin and stinging at the corners of her eyes.
“There they are,” Kin said.
Two young men around her age stood about the edge of a broad pit trap. Buruu spread his pinions and reared back, cruising in to land as gracefully as he could on the broken ground. Yukiko and Kin slipped from his shoulders and made their way across snarled roots and green-clawed scrub, Buruu prowling behind, tail stretched like a whip.
Yukiko recognized the pair with an inward groan; Isao and Atsushi. The former had long dark hair drawn back into a topknot, angular features, chin shadowed with fuzz too soft to really be called whiskers. The latter was small and wiry, light-fingered, dark hair drawn back in braids, one hand on the haft of a long spear with a single-edged, curving blade.
The pair covered their fists and bowed.
“Hello, gentlemen,” she muttered. “Strange seeing you all the way out here.”
“We were scouting, Stormdancer,” Isao said.
“Scouting? Don’t you two usually do that through a hole in the bathroom wall?”
The pair looked at each other, then glanced at Buruu’s razored talons. The thunder tiger growled long and low, staring at each boy in turn, but his laughter was warm in Yukiko’s mind.
YOU ARE MERCILESS.
So I should be. They’ve seen me naked.
DO YOU PLAN TO TORTURE THEM FOREVER?
A few more years ought to cover it.
“W-we were looking for oni,” Atsushi stammered. “As Daichi-sama bid us. There have been reports of the demons moving in the deep woods. Their numbers are growing again.”
“They know nothing but hatred for our kind,” Isao said. “The children of the Endsinger do not sleep, Stormdancer.”
“Why do you call her that?” Kin scowled at the boys. “She has a name.”
Isao drummed his fingers on his war club, a studded tetsubo of solid oak, haft wrapped in bands of old, river-smooth leather. He glanced over briefly as Kin spoke, but dismissed the boy’s words without reply. Atsushi kept his eyes on Yukiko as if Kin hadn’t spoken at all.
Yukiko glanced at the pit trap. The hole was twenty feet cubed; big enough for an oni to fall into. It had been covered by a layer of foliage, concealed from anyone who wouldn’t recognize the warning markers around it. Judging from the hole in the covering, whatever had plunged through wasn’t much bigger than a man.
“We found it an hour ago.” Isao pointed to the trap with his war club. “It must have fallen in last night. Tracks came from the south.”
“Did you speak to it?”
“No.” Isao shook his head. “We saw it looked like Guild, so we sent Takeshi to find you and Daichi-sama. I’ll not speak to any bastard Lotusman. Their kind are poison.”
Yukiko saw the boy shoot a brief, venomous glance at Kin.
How did it find us?
PERHAPS YOU COULD USE YOUR TONGUE FOR ITS INTENDED PURPOSE AND ASK?
Yukiko poked out the aforementioned tongue and rolled her eyes.
Hilarious, you.
Buruu prowled to the lip of the pit, peeked over the edge, wings spread. He snorted, amber eyes narrowed to knife-cuts. His tail swept from side to side in swift, agitated arcs.
INTERESTING.
Yukiko crept up beside him, put her arm around his neck and looked into the hole. Two bulbous red eyes stared back at her. She saw a humanoid figure, wasp-waisted, a featureless face. It was covered head to foot in some kind of skin-tight membrane, earth-brown, slick and glistening. A cluster of eight chromed arms uncurled from a melon-sized orb on its back, as if some eyeless metal spider were fused with its flesh.
Yukiko’s hand went reflexively to the tantō at her back, her voice dripping revulsion.
“What the hells is that?”
4
DOPPELGANGER
The slap was perfect. Hard enough to rock the girl’s head back on her shoulders, bring tears to already red and swollen eyes. But not so hard as to split her lip, to leave a mark that wouldn’t set to fading after an hour or so. Spittle sprayed her face as the warden bellowed.
“Answer me, you little bitch!”
The girl hung her head, weeping, face hidden by a curtain of tangled hair. Her sobbing echoed off the damp stone of the prison cell, lank straw strewn underfoot. Manacled wrists, long knife wounds scabbed down her forearms. A cracked and swollen cheek healing slowly. Bare and bruised legs dotted with fresh lesions. A perceptive man might have noted the wounds were shaped like rat bites.
The warden’s patience had frayed to a few lonely threads over the past week. Each maidservant in his custody was technically nobility; in theory they had families to press the Tora Daimyo for their return—presuming a new clanlord was ever chosen, of course. Even after they’d been arrested, no official accusation was leveled by the disintegrating judiciary. And thus the warden was placed in the unenviable position of having to “make inquiries” of his prisoners without the burning iron or water torture usually employed during interrogations in Kigen jail.
It was enough to drive a fellow to drink.
The warden seized the girl’s throat, forced her head back so she could see his eyes. He saw naked fear, pupils dilated, discolored cheek wet with tears.
“You served Lady Aisha.” The girl gurgled as he tightened his grip. “Your mistress spent hours with the Kitsune girl, plotting her brother’s assassination. You were privy to all of it!”
“She always … sent us … out.” A croak through a cinched windpipe. “Always—”
“You are a Kagé spy! I want names, I want—”
“Warden!”
The shout rang out in the cell’s confines, taut with command. The warden turned and saw two bushimen in black-banded armor outside the cell, flanking a third man in a tailored kimono of rich scarlet.
The man’s hair was drawn back in an elaborate braid, pierced with golden pins. He was a good-looking fellow with a studious air; a handsome face with perpetually narrowed eyes, as if he spent too much time reading by lamplight. A chainkatana and wakizashi were crossed at his waist—the chainsaw daishō marking a nobleborn member of the military caste. He clutched a beautifully crafted iron fan in one hand. Smooth shaven, sharp jaw covered by an expensive clockwork breather. He was in his early twenties at most, but his rank was that of a man two decades older.
“Magistrate Ichizo.” The warden released the girl and bowed. “Your visit was unannounced.”
“Obviously.” The man’s eyes flickered to the girl crumpled on the stone. “This is how you treat your wards? Ladies of court? You disgrace yourself and dishonor our Lord, Warden.”
“Forgiveness, honorable Magistrate.” The warden bowed. “But I was commanded to uncover any Kagé operatives—”
“Each one of these girls served the traitor whore, Lady Aish—”
The blow was so swift, the warden almost couldn’t track it. Ichizo’s iron fan caught him full in the face, hard enough to open a small cut across his cheek. The crack of metal upon flesh faded, a stone-heavy silence in its wake, broken only by the girl’s quiet sobs.
“You speak of the last daughter of Kazumitsu’s line,” Ichizo hissed. “The blood of the first Shōgun flows in her veins, and the next heir to this empire will grow in her womb.” He slipped the fan into his sleeve. “Mind. Your. Tongue.”
The warden pawed the cut on his cheek, lowered his eyes.
“Forgiveness, Magistrate. But the Chief Treasurer demanded—”
“Chief Treasurer Nagahara resigned from office two hours ago. The stresses of public life have extracted a grievous toll upon his health. He has retired to his country estates with the blessings of our Lord, Daimyo Hiro.”
The warden sighed inwardly.
So. Another power shift.
At last count, three nobles had claimed leadership of the Tora zaibatsu; two senior ministers and the young Iron Samurai who had lost his arm (and very nearly his life) defending Yoritomo-no-miya from his assassin. Now it seemed the time for diplomacy was ending. Hiro’s faction had assassinated four high-ranking ministers in the last two weeks—courtly machinations turning inevitably toward the politics of the duelist’s katana and the assassin’s blade. Swordmen like the warden were caught in between—bound by oaths to the Daimyo, but unsure who the hells the Daimyo even was.
“This barbarism will end.” The magistrate’s gaze roamed the cell. “Lady Aisha’s handmaidens will be escorted to the palace and placed under house arrest. I will speak to each girl personally regarding their treatment whilst in your care.”