by Jay Kristoff
Clear as true glass, cold as ice and stinging with the promise of snow. As if Susano-ō had been holding it in his upturned palms for weeks on end, unleashed now in one colossal downpour. The heat amongst the gathering dissipated—water dashed onto a smoldering firepit. But deep inside the coals, fire still raged.
“Pregnant?” Kaori’s voice was barely audible over the deluge.
“… Twins,” Yukiko said.
“Who is the father?”
“None of your godsdamned business.”
“Your Kin?”
Yukiko licked her lips. Said nothing.
“Our would-be Shōgun Hiro, perhaps?”
Lightning clawed the skies, turning all to lurid, grisly white.
“To be honest,” Kaori said, “I don’t know which is worse. Either way, it explains much.”
“We’re done.” Yukiko clawed damp hair from her eyes. “I’m gone.”
“Gone?” Akihito stared at her, horrified. “Gone where?”
“Yama.” Yukiko raised her voice, turning to the assembled crowd. “Anyone who wishes to come with me is welcome. I will stand by the rebels of the Lotus Guild. Speak to the Kitsune Daimyo and see if he’ll accept my help. And when the Earthcrusher comes, I’ll stand in its way. But I won’t stand by and be a party to murder. And I won’t stay in this village if that’s what this rebellion has become.”
“Go then,” Kaori spat. “Go raise your bastards amongst your Guild dogs. They’ll be in like company, no matter the name of the traitor you fucked to spawn them.”
Buruu’s roar shattered the shocked still. He took one step forward, floorboards crushed to splinters beneath his talons. Yukiko put out her hand, her face bloodless. The thunder tiger turned and looked at her, tail lashing just once, a spray of glittering droplets spilling between the rain. The girl shook her head, lips pressed into a razor-thin line. The arashitora turned back to Kaori with a snarl that made her flinch. But he moved no closer.
The faces of the assembled villagers spoke of astonishment. Of horror. Of an unraveling deep inside that left them breathless and gutted. A girl stepped forward, no more than a child, tears lost in the thundering rain.
“You can’t go! Stormdancer!”
“I can’t stay,” Yukiko said. “Not like this. The Guild rebels see the wrong in this world we’ve built, and they’ve chosen to fight to make it right. How they fight is none of our business. We’ve no right to expose them, or put their lives at risk. We’re no different from them. We’re no better. As soon as we start thinking we are, we’re just another Shōgunate, waiting to happen.
“But you can come. Any of you. All of you.” She turned to the sky-ship captain, standing beneath his impossible straw hat. “Blackbird-san, will you carry them on the Kurea? Anyone who wishes to leave and come with me to Yama?”
“You saved my life. My crew and my ship.” The captain nodded. “If you ask, it is yours.”
As Akihito stepped forward, Buruu and Kaiah turned on him with a snarl. Wings flared, tails stretched behind them like whips. The big man stopped dead, his voice low.
“Yukiko, you can’t do this…”
“It’s done, Akihito. All that remains is for you to pick a side.”
The girl climbed onto Buruu’s back, looked amongst the villagers, the cloudwalkers, this tiny knot of rebellion now unraveling faster than any could have foreseen. A fortress made of clay, crumbling to the tune of falling rain.
“All of you,” she said.
Thunder bellowed overhead.
“Choose.”
2
CAPITULATION
Fair Kigen had lost her First Daughter.
The city was dressed in funeral black, boardwalk littered with the skeletons of gutted sky-ships. Spot fires still smoldered in Downside, filling the already choking air with smoke. Her people wore soot-stained clothes and bewildered expressions. Soldiers walked her cobbles, heads hung in shame. A mother wandered black riverbanks, her eyes as empty as the charred wicker stroller she pushed before her.
When the Stormdancer had landed in Market Square and urged Kigen’s people to open their eyes and raise their fists, it had sounded an easy thing. A wonderful and powerful thing. And in a way, it was all that. But it was also an ugly thing. A brutal, callous, bloody thing.
Shima’s people were learning what it meant to stand rather than kneel. Freedom is never given in tyranny’s shadow—it is only taken. The Kagé rebels had done so, just as they promised. They’d burned Kigen city. They’d ruined Tora Hiro’s chance of renewing the dynasty that had ruled Shima for nine generations. And they’d murdered the Lady Aisha.
Her pyre was attended by almost every man, woman and child remaining in the city. Their fair Lady. The last remnant of a proud lineage, the final link to long-passed days of glory. As Shōgun, her brother Yoritomo had been respected, obeyed, feared. But Aisha, with her wisdom and beauty and flawless grace—she had simply been loved.
And now she was dead.
Her betrothed had watched her body burn, his armor painted death-white, face smeared with ashes as if he too were to be consigned to the pyre. He hadn’t shamed himself with tears. But the Daimyo of the Tiger clan had spoken to the assembled populace when the fire died, and in his eyes, they saw an emptiness speaking of all they’d lost.
“That which has been taken can never be reclaimed,” he’d said. “Kazumitsu’s last daughter is ended, and with her, all our hopes for tomorrow. But she will not stand alone before the great Enma-ō. The Stormdancer, the Kagé dogs who burned this city, those who made mourners of us all—they will join my betrothed in death. I will lay her down on a bed of their ashes. And when I die, they will greet me in the Hells.”
Some had cheered. Some had wept. Most had simply stared. This was the hour when words meant nothing. When talk of revolution and justice was washed away, and all that remained was the reality of a gutted home, a bloodstained thoroughfare, an empty stroller. This was fresh-faced troops marching onto Guild sky-ships. This was mothers and wives kissing sons and husbands they may never see again.
This was the pain before birth. The storm before spring.
This was what they asked for.
This was what they wanted.
This was war.
* * *
Fifteen days.
Hiro stood with hands clasped behind him, green eyes staring at a gigantic map of the Seven Isles on the floor beneath him. Long black hair tied in a topknot, a pointed goatee on a handsome jaw, white ashes smeared all over his face. The iron prosthetic where his right arm should have been spat chi smoke into the soot-stained air, staining the rice-paper walls.
Six Iron Samurai stood with him, faces also smeared with ceremonial ashes. Each stood seven feet tall in their death-white armor, masks crafted like oni demons; tusks and horns and grinning fangs. Their eyes were those of dead men.
“A fifteen-day march, Daimyo,” said a voice like angry insect wings. “Then you and the Earthcrusher will be in the Iishi.”
Hiro glanced at the figure looming beside him. Shateigashira Kensai was encased in his heavy brass atmos-suit. Instead of an expressionless mask like other Guildsmen, the Voice of the Lotus Guild in Kigen wore a sculpted brass face over his own. The features were of a beautiful boy in the prime of his youth, pouting lips open in a permanent howl and spewing segmented cable. Glowing blood-red eyes regarded Hiro, unblinking and soulless.
Three Guild Artificers stood with their Second Bloom, also encased in rivet-studded brass. Mechabacii clicked and skittered on their chests, counting beads moving back and forth in unfathomable patterns. Hiro wondered if any of them had helped design the replacement for the arm she’d torn from his shoulder.
He could feel his missing fingers, tried to ignore the urge to scratch.
The urge to scream.
The room in which the men stood was known as “the Face of Shima.” It loomed in the heart of the Shōgun’s palace, fifty feet square, two stories deep. The floor consisted of over a
thousand interlocking tiles, forming an enormous map of the Seven Isles. A cluster of lights and scrims in the ceiling illuminated tiny armies in Kigen city, the Phoenix capital Danro, the staging ground near First House.
A nation poised on the brink of war.
Hiro’s eyes were locked on the small inlaid peaks of the Iishi mountains, the tiny spotlight indicating the Kagé stronghold.
There she waits for me.
“North, northeast,” he said. “First House to the Iishi. Magnify.”
The servants in the control booth worked a series of levers and dials. The chatter of iron ratchets sounded below, and like a wave across a wooden ocean, each floor tile slipped down into the impossible mechanism beneath. New tiles slid up into place, flipping over one by one until the floor became whole again. The map now showed an enlarged version of the Imperium’s northeast. A scrim was flipped, and the planned invasion route was traced in red light.
“We approach indirectly,” Hiro noted. “Why not head straight to the mountains?”
“The Jukai deadlands should be avoided, Daimyo.” Kensai indicated gray areas around First House otherwise referred to as “the Stain.” “The Earthcrusher would not be troubled, but some fissures are too wide for a shredderman to cross. Besides, you need to muster your troops.”
“The Phoenix fleet is already assembled,” Hiro frowned. “Daimyo Shin and Shou have graciously given me command of their forces, and my Tiger troops muster as we speak.”
“And the Dragon clan? The Foxes?”
“The Ryu flip back and forth like counting beads. And the Foxes are buried inside their holes. We do not need them. Between the Earthcrusher, a hundred shreddermen suits and the Phoenix sky-fleet, we have more than enough swords to destroy the Kagé.”
“The Dragons and Foxes may yet bend their knee when they see the Earthcrusher.”
“The destruction of the rebellion is all that matters, Kensai-san.”
The Second Bloom’s voice grew cold. “It is worth a detour to give Fox and Dragon a chance to join our endeavor.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I will not waste time in seeking their aid. Every day Yuki—” Hiro faltered, drew a calming breath. “… Every day Yoritomo’s assassin lives is another day the Kazumitsu Elite live in disgrace. The Kagé burned my city. Killed my fiancée. They must die. Every one. Not next year. Not next month. Now!” The word was punctuated by an armored fist onto timber.
“I will repeat myself.” Kensai folded his arms. “If the Kitsune and Ryu offer allegiance when they lay eyes on the Earthcrusher, you will accept it.”
“You forget yourself, Guildsman. I am your Shōgun!”
“But you are not Shōgun, Hiro-san. Daimyo Haruka of the Dragon clan has not sworn to you. Daimyo Isamu of the Foxes did not even attend your wedding feast. You command the Tiger and Phoenix clans only through the strength of arms the Lotus Guild provides. So if Fox or Dragon capitulate at any point, you will welcome them with open arms. Though you may be intent on glorious suicide, some of us have a responsibility to the Imperium after this insurgency is quashed. The war against the gaijin must be renewed. We need more land. More slaves. More inochi. If we can save months of conflict against the Foxes and Dragons, we will.”
“I will not simply—”
“You will do as you are told!”
As one, Hiro’s samurai drew their chainkatanas and thumbed the ignitions. Lantern light flashed on spinning steel teeth, in the eyes of the death-white samurai in their demon masks. The air was filled with the screech of saw-toothed blades. Hissing pistons. Revving motors.
Kensai’s hollow laughter.
“You draw chainblades against me? I, who provide the chi that fuels them? I, who designed the colossus you lead to the Iishi?” The Shateigashira chuckled behind that perfect, boyish mask. “The Kagé incinerated your fleet when they burned Kigen harbor, Daimyo. You cannot even move your troops without us, let alone fight when you get there.”
“The iron rail still runs. Our forces can head north by train.”
“And who do you suppose fuels them?” Kensai shook his head. “Put your swords aside, children, and remember what you are.”
“We are warriors of the Tiger clan. We are samurai!”
“Above and beyond anything else you may be,” Kensai sighed, “you are ours.”
Hiro’s jaw was clenched tight, his fists tighter. But at last, he glanced at his men, cut the air with his hand. With agonizing slowness, each samurai removed his gauntlet, blooded the drawn steel, then sheathed his blade. Kensai watched, expression hidden behind that impassive boy’s face. His voice was the rasp of a thousand lotusflies.
“It was a stirring speech you made at Lady Aisha’s pyre, Daimyo. But the time for pageantry is over. The Stormdancer poses a threat to this nation that cannot be overstated. In the space of weeks, she has turned the populace to rebellion and this nation’s capital to ashes. But do not believe this Shōgunate’s problems will simply disappear once she is dead. If you do not care for your country’s future, at least have the sense to obey those who do.”
His eyes burned bloody red, dying stars in a sky of brass.
“Are you hearing me, Hiro-san?”
Hiro was staring at his clockwork arm. The ball-joint fingers outstretched, iron-gray tendons now painted bone-white. The color of death. The death awaiting him at the end of this road. The death of honor. Of the Way. Of the girl who once thought him her love.
“… I hear you.”
“The sooner you rendezvous with the Earthcrusher, the sooner it marches,” Kensai said. “And from then? Fifteen days.”
Bone-white metal curled into a fist.
He nodded.
“Fifteen days.”
3
SHEDDING SKIN
With every breath dragged over his teeth, pain flared like sunlight on broken glass. Daichi coughed, a handful of wet sputters leaving a black taste on his tongue. He was slumped in an iron chair inside a cell with no windows, manacles cutting into his wrists, stink of chi filling his broken nose. The thrum of countless engines vibrated through the floor.
How long had he been here? Days? Weeks? His stomach so empty it no longer growled, head still ringing from his last beating. But he hadn’t broken. Hadn’t begged. Not yet, anyway.
Only a matter of time, he knew. With enough raindrops, even mountains became sand. But the blacklung was working him too, in the long and quiet dark between one beating and the next. Even as the earthquakes shivered the walls around him, painting his skin with dust. Even when the Lotusmen weren’t grinding him closer to his ending, the enemy inside his body was gathering its forces all the same. He wondered who would prove the victor in that race.
He had a favorite, to be sure.
The cell door opened, a shear of painful light cutting across yellow stone. Heavy iron boots rang on the floor, the heartbeat drumming of heel and toe mixed with the song of clockwork skins. How many had come to beat him this time? Four? Five?
Did it matter?
He felt smooth fingers pressing his pulse, pulling back his eyelids. He caught an impression of long, silvered arms, bloody eyes in a featureless face. A wasp-waist. Glossy skin. Noises, like an orchestra of insect parts.
“How is he?”
A male’s voice, deep and growling. Daichi peered through the shifting haze, saw a face he recognized from years past. A boy-child’s visage in burnished brass, iron cable squirming from open, frozen lips. The Voice of Kigen City—Second Bloom Kensai himself.
The lord of flies had come to the feast at last.
“He is weak, Shateigashira.” A female’s voice, thin and sibilant. “Malnourished, dehydrated and concussed. I imagine he is in considerable pain.”
“We can do better than ‘considerable,’ surely?”
“We see only pointlessness in this, Shateigashira.”
A soft voice, as of a man murmuring in his sleep. Daichi squinted at the one who spoke, caught the impressio
n of a small man in dark cloth. A black breather shaped like a grin was affixed over his mouth, hissing plumes of sweet smoke, but to Daichi’s surprise, the man’s face was otherwise uncovered. His eyes were so bloodshot, the whites were simply red. The room seemed to grow darker when Daichi looked at him.
“I will judge what is and is not pointless here, Inquisitor,” came Kensai’s reply. “I am still Second Bloom of this chapterhouse.”
“The boy has brought us this man as a gift. Is that not proof enough of loyalty?”
“Apparently not.”
“He is destined for great things, Shateigashira. The son of Kioshi will rise to heights his father never dreamed of. The Chamber of Smoke speaks no lie.”
“Then you have nothing to fear.” Kensai turned to the door. “Bring him in.”
Daichi watched another Lotusman enter the room, a slow, steady march with hands clasped before it. The suit marked it a member of the Artificer Sect—the engineers and technicians who designed the Guild’s mechanical marvels. Ornate filigree decorated the brass, a pattern that put Daichi in mind of swirling smoke.
“Second Bloom,” said the newcomer, bowing low.
Daichi’s heart skipped, fingers curling into fists. Even behind the mask, he’d have recognized that voice anywhere. The boy he’d trusted. The boy who’d handed him over to these dogs to be beaten and burned.
“Kin-san.” The little man in black returned the bow.
“Kin-san, is it?” Kensai growled. “Your father Kioshi gave you his name when he died. An honorable son would bear it with pride.”
“The venerable First Bloom has promoted our young brother to Fifth Bloom after bringing this Kagé dog to justice, Shateigashira,” said the little man. “It is surely within you to acknowledge he has earned his own name.”
Daichi lunged upright, cracking lips drawn back from his teeth, chains snapping taut.
“You godsless traitor,” he spat at the boy. “Enma-ō damn y—”
