by Jay Kristoff
20
CAN’T AND WON’T
When it came to his “Ten Things I’d Rather Make Sweet, Sweet Love to the Dark Mother Than Do” list, Yoshi had decided “Flying On the Back of a Thunder Tiger” sat quite comfortably at number two.
“Falling Off the Back of a Thunder Tiger” was number one.
Oh, it was a pretty thing at first, to be sure. Storm growling at their backs as they sliced through the air, wind whipping through his clothes like knives. But once the initial thrill faded, Yoshi was left with a vague sense of wrongness about it all. The clutch of gravity. The vertigo as he peered into the drop below. If Lord Izanagi intended for him to be up here, he wouldn’t feel like a virgin bride on her wedding night. And, to step aside from the metaphysical and into the practical for a moment, the saddle on Buruu’s back had been made for a person with a different … configuration than his own.
Son of a ronin’s whore, my balls are killing me.
YOU TELL ME THIS WHY?
Some sympathy would kill you?
I COULD KISS THEM BETTER FOR YOU?
You don’t have lips, Mockingbird. You have a beak that can cut steel.
IT MAY END BADLY FOR YOU, YES.
Yoshi’s hands were entwined in Buruu’s feathers, freezing wind threatening to snatch the goggles from his face and hurl them into the mile-long drop beneath. He kept his eyes fixed on the southern horizon, squinting through the haze.
This smog is toxic. Makes me feel like tossing breakfast.
NOT ON MY BACK YOU WON’T, BOY.
Yoshi dared a quick glance at the land rushing away below them.
Looks so much worse from up here. I never knew it’d got so bad. You don’t hear about it on the radio. You don’t see the scope of it from the city. Fuckers have kept us so blind.
YOUR LAND IS DYING.
And here you are, fighting to save it. Not sure I see the point now. Even if the Guild was destroyed tomorrow, how the hells will you ever fix all this?
WHO SAID WE WOULD?
You must think there’s a chance, or you wouldn’t be here.
I DID NOT COME HERE TO SAVE YOUR HOME, BOY. I CAME BECAUSE I LOST MY OWN.
Family troubles?
ONE MIGHT SAY.
Know that feeling.
A curtain of rank black rain seethed across their path, so Buruu swept above the cloud cover, high into the freezing air. Yoshi curled into a ball of miserable shivers on his back, but peering over one wingtip, he realized he couldn’t see the ground anymore—just a rolling floor of iron-gray that looked thick enough to catch him if he fell. And though he knew it preposterous, somehow the thought calmed him enough that his guts climbed down from his ribs.
Yoshi caressed the metal frame covering Buruu’s feathers, watching the machinery at work as the beast’s wings sliced the sky. The contraption was beaten, bent, held together by third-rate jury-rigging and a prayer. As he watched, a severed white feather fell away and drifted down into the abyss. Yoshi felt his stomach begin climbing again.
You sure these clockwork wings are flight-worthy?
THEY HAVE SEEN BETTER DAYS.
Where’d you get them?
A BOY MADE THEM FOR ME.
This Kin I heard about? The traitor?
YES.
Sounded like a little bastard to me.
NOT ENTIRELY TRUE. NOR ENTIRELY FAIR.
That knife in your back doesn’t make you itch?
IT MAKES ME SAD. IF NOT FOR KIN, YUKIKO WOULD BE DEAD, AND I, A SLAVE. I WOULD NOT HAVE BELIEVED HIM CAPABLE OF BETRAYAL. PART OF ME STILL CANNOT.
We’re all of us made of scars, Mockingbird.
IT IS WORSE FOR YUKIKO. SOON, THEY WILL BE ALL SHE IS.
You really care about her, eh?
ONE MIGHT SAY.
I don’t want to offend you or anything, given our present altitude and the whole gravity thing, but she struck me as something of a bitch.
Buruu’s growl traveled up Yoshi’s spine as he added a hasty addendum.
Really nice cheekbones, though …
YOU DO NOT KNOW HER. WHAT SHE HAS BEEN THROUGH. THE WEIGHT OF THIS ENTIRE COUNTRY IS ON HER. SHE IS SEVENTEEN WINTERS OLD. HOW DO YOU THINK SUCH A MANTLE WOULD SIT ON YOUR SHOULDERS, BOY?
Badly. Why the hells you think I’m not in Yama right now?
Buruu remained silent, eyes narrowed against the howling wind.
Thing is, Mockingbird, I’m wondering the same thing about you.
WHAT?
Well, you love her so much, right? She’s your dawning and dusk, I get it. So, if you don’t mind me asking, why the hells are you flying my sorry ass around instead of being back there with her?
A long silence, battered by brief thunder.
… SHE ASKS WHAT I CANNOT GIVE.
Oh, really.
REALLY.
Might be I’m only eighteen summers aboard this ferry-ride, but couldn’t say I’ve seen many fixes where folks genuinely can’t give what others ask. Most times it’s all about won’t.
WON’T?
Won’t pay the price. Won’t do the dance. Won’t kiss the girl.
Yoshi felt a grudging warmth in the thunder tiger’s chest, something approaching a smile. Buruu dipped into the cloudbank, swooped up again with that same sense of abandon; a small child skipping across a field of sky.
YOU ARE A STRANGE ONE, BOY.
Yoshi laughed.
Hells, Mockingbird, coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment.
* * *
Day frayed into night, and Yoshi did his best to sleep despite the cutting chill. They flew above the cloud cover, the white noise of distant rain like a lullaby. Anxiety chewed at him, and he could feel that same emotion building inside the thunder tiger’s head. The farther away from Yama they drew, the worse it got. Close to dawn, Yoshi decided he’d used up enough of the arashitora’s minutes.
Listen, you’d best be getting back. Yukiko will be fretting on you.
WE ARE NOT YET AT THE JUNCTION.
I can walk from here. Maybe catch a hand-car. Just drop me on the railway tracks.
AS YOU WISH.
Buruu swept down through the clouds. Thunder swelled, drumming on Yoshi’s ears in a hymn of iron and engines. The cloud was thick as mud. Wet and freezing cold.
They were virtually on top of the sky-ship before they heard it.
As they swooped out of the gray, a three-man scout corvette flying Phoenix colors was cutting through the air alongside them, its arrow-tip inflatable adorned with a sunbird in flight. Yoshi and pilot caught sight of each simultaneously, both gawping in shock.
“Holy shit!” Yoshi cried.
The pilot roared in alarm, his marksman swiveling his shuriken-thrower just as Buruu came to his senses, banked hard and fell into a dive. Wrenching his controls, the pilot followed, motors screaming, spewing blue-black behind.
Yoshi and Buruu dropped like a stone, but looking over his shoulder, the boy was alarmed to find the tiny ship keeping pace. A chattering burst of shuriken fire filled the air, razored steel disks whizzing past his shoulders, skimming off Buruu’s metal wings, and with a bang and a bright burst of sparks in his eyes, clipping the right side of his head.
“Ow, godsdammit!”
Yoshi reached up to the impossible pain, fingers coming away red and gleaming.
They chopped half my ear off!
OH. THAT IS TERRIBLE.
Fuck you, I needed that!
Buruu was spiraling down, trying to gain distance on their pursuers. Another burst of shuriken fire cut between the rain, Yoshi pressing low to Buruu’s back.
THEY ARE SWIFTER THAN OTHERS I HAVE FOUGHT.
Up! Go up! No way they’ll climb faster than you!
The thunder tiger pulled out of his dive and tore up toward the hidden sun. There was an awful moment as Yoshi glanced over his shoulder again—right down the ’thrower’s barrel, down into that bottomless black, just waiting for it to open up and him along with it.
Fly
, godsdamn you, fly!
HOLD ON TO ME.
The beast pulled up, wings tearing the iron-gray, Yoshi clinging with fingers and thighs and teeth. They looped up and over the sky-ship, the boy treating Buruu to the most imaginative burst of profanity he could conjure. The corvette’s marksman lost sight of them, screaming for coordinates as Buruu completed his loop-the-loop, descending like a thunderbolt.
Their path took them through the dart. Not over or past, simply through—the dirigible shredding like paper, the ultralight frame disintegrating amidst the high-pitched scream of breaking metal and escaping hydrogen. The crew wailed as they tumbled free, trailing long sashes of bright Phoenix orange all the way down, like ribbons from the tails of dying kites.
Yoshi was sure the sound of them hitting the ground would come back to visit when the lights went out.
Izanagi’s balls …
ARE YOU WELL?
Yoshi pressed hand to head, wincing as he touched what was left of his ear.
Hurts worse than my manparts, but I’ll live …
He felt the thunder tiger tense, something close to fear rippling through the beast’s mind. Buruu’s eyes were fixed on the southern horizon, a low growl rumbling in his chest.
PERHAPS NOT MUCH LONGER.
What?
LOOK.
Yoshi squinted into the haze and rain.
I can’t see anything.
USE MY EYES.
The boy complied, stepping into the warm dark behind the arashitora’s eyelids, feeling his own lashes fluttering as the world snapped into shimmering brilliance. He was overcome with sensation; the vibrant predator rush, the thrill of the wind beneath his wings. Fear-tinged. And as he focused on the horizon, he felt it swell in his own gut—cold and slick and overshadowing the exhilaration of their brief victory.
A sky-fleet. So far away as to be mere specks, but Izanagi’s balls, so many … A wall of black dust thrown up by the horde marching below. And there, towering above the ground, eyes aglow like vast ghost lanterns, a giant. A giant of black smoke and blacker iron.
EARTHCRUSHER.
Izanagi’s balls …
The combined airpower of the Phoenix clan, a swarm of Guild ironclads—all of them looking like children’s toys beside it.
… I MUST RETURN TO YAMA. TELL YUKIKO.
Think you better had.
YOU ARE STILL SET ON REVENGE? YOU WILL NOT STAND AGAINST THIS HOST?
What the hells is one gutter-rat going to do against that?
IF YOU DO NOT TRY? NOTHING AT ALL.
I owe a debt. And old Yoshi pays what he owes.
YOU COULD BE MORE, BOY.
Yoshi shook his head.
Not cut out to be a hero. I think this story has a few too many already.
They set down beside the railway tracks, a few hundred yards from a battered little station of corrugated iron. An old man in a broad hat was dozing against the cranks of his handcart, starting awake at the rumble of too-close thunder. He watched wide-eyed as the arashitora alighted on the bluestone, the boy hopping down lightly, the side of his face painted in blood.
You take care of yourself. Look out for my sister.
I WILL. IF YOU CANNOT LET IT REST, I WISH YOU LUCK IN YOUR HUNT, BOY.
Like I said there’s can’t and there’s won’t. Hope you can see the difference now. Or at least be honest about which is which.
The beast and the boy stared at each other, dirty rain filling the space between them.
PERHAPS WE WILL MEET AGAIN.
Never can tell.
FAREWELL, MONKEY-CHILD.
Fly safe, Mockingbird.
And with a creak of iridescent metal, the rush of a hungry wind, he was gone.
21
SLOWLY TO SCARLET
Her arms around his neck felt like coming home.
As if he knew what coming home felt like …
Gods, I was so worried, Buruu.
NOTHING TO FEAR. YOU ARE MY HEART, REMEMBER? I DIE WITHOUT YOU.
Yukiko held him tight beneath the palace eaves as black rain sluiced down from above. He was soaked from his flight, eyes stinging from the tar. She pressed her cheek to his, heedless of the poison clinging to his quills.
Aren’t I usually the melodramatic one?
NOT SO, LATELY, IT SEEMS.
I’ll get some clean water. Wash this filth off you.
WE HAVE LITTLE TIME, YUKIKO. HIRO’S ARMY MARCHES. I HAVE SEEN THEM.
She licked her lips, nodded.
We have time enough to get you clean.
The girl padded away toward the kitchens, and Buruu stared at the storm raging above, lighting reflected in his eyes. Great Raijin, father of all arashitora, was busy on his drums, windows shaking with each rumbling peal. The chemical rain tumbled from darkening skies, slowly stripping all beneath it; poison pumped into lungs and earth and sky.
How completely it ruled this place. To think something so innocuous—one tiny flower—could transform the shape of the land so utterly. The engines and machines and treasures spitting tiny puffs of poison into once blue skies, turning slowly to scarlet. Killing the land one breath at a time, wrapped in a bow of blood-red petals.
Yukiko soon returned carrying buckets of almost-clean water from an underground Iishi spring. She began washing him down, black running through to gray and finally to pristine white again. He wasn’t sure if the rain would eat at his feathers like everything else it touched, but his eyes felt full of sand, and Kin’s device would surely be suffering.
I was worried about you, you know. When you flew away.
SO YOU SAID.
Where did you go?
YOSHI WAS HEADED SOUTH. I TOOK HIM PART OF THE WAY.
Hana told me he left. She never said why.
SOMETHING HE NEEDED TO DO.
It seems a selfish thing. To leave right when Hana needs him the most …
KAORI MIGHT SAY THE SAME ABOUT YOU.
… That’s not fair, Buruu.
I THINK IT NEVER IS, STANDING ON THE OTHER SIDE.
Yukiko said nothing, scowling as she heaped more water over the contraption on his back. Black pooled around his feet, smelling vaguely of dead flowers.
I MUST GO ALSO.
Go where?
WHERE YOU ASKED. EVERSTORM.
Oh my gods! Truly? How far is it? How much food should I pack?
YOU ARE NOT COMING.
… The hells I’m not.
TOO DANGEROUS.
As opposed to staying here with the Earthcrusher and gaijin army?
YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND. IT IS FIRE AND SCREAMING WIND. WHERE SUSANO-Ō PLAYS THE STORM ETERNAL TO KEEP THE GREAT DRAGONS IN THEIR SLUMBER. NO PLACE FOR YOUR KIND.
You’re not leaving me. Not again. Don’t you dare.
YOU ARE NEEDED HERE. THE PEOPLE WILL QUAIL WITHOUT YOU.
They have Hana and Kaiah.
SHE IS ONLY A GIRL.
What the hells do you think I am?
Buruu tilted his head, answered as if she had asked her own name.
YOU ARE A STORMDANCER.
And what’s a Stormdancer without her thunder tiger? Where would Kitsune no Akira have been without Raikou? Who would have flown Tora Takehiko into Devil Gate if not Gufuu?
I WILL NOT LEAD THEM INTO DANGER.
His eyes flitted to her belly, to the iron breastplate covering the tiny bump of warmth.
Gods, don’t start that again …
I DO NOT GO TO EVERSTORM FOR TALK, YUKIKO. I GO TO KILL OR DIE.
And you expect me to just sit here and pray?
WHO WILL BRING YOU BACK IF I FALL?
Why would I want to come back if you did?
FOOLISHNESS. YOU WILL BE A MOTHER SOON. MUCH TO LIVE FOR. MUCH TO FIGHT FOR. THIS WHOLE COUNTRY NEEDS YOU.
But I need you, Buruu. Don’t you realize I can’t do any of this without you?
She threw her arms around his neck, squeezing tight. He could feel the aching of her heart like a blade in his own chest, her fe
ar turning his gut to water. This girl who meant more to him than life itself. This girl he loved with every moment, every breath, as much a part of him as the wind and the rain and blood in his veins.
I LOVE YOU, YUKIKO.
And I love you.
YOU MIGHT NOT SAY THAT. IF YOU KNEW.
He bowed his head, pushed his cheek against hers, the rumble of thunder overhead sending shivers down their spines.
IF YOU KNEW.
He felt her near that place; the place she’d never sought to enter despite the power and pain growing in her mind. A locked door, barred and rusted. The place he was at his worst. The place he’d lost his pride and his name and himself.
But she loved him. She’d always love him.
Wouldn’t she?
Her thoughts were gentle as summer rain.
Show me.
And so he did.
* * *
To call it a storm would be to call the ocean a raindrop, a hurricane the spring breeze.
Lightning unending, the thunder a constant barrage. Rain like falling swords, a wind not so much a wall as a cliff, set against a vast blackness crashing like avalanches overhead. Jagged spires of dark stone, cracked at their summits and spitting fire into blackened skies. Ashes. Embers. Great floods of molten rock flowing from the earth’s belly, cooling at the boiling ocean’s touch until mountains stood tall and defiant in the seething oceans.
The throne of Susano-ō, god of storms. Here he made his music, the vibration seeping into volcanic water and lulling the great beasts beneath the waves. Vast as time they were. Old as gods themselves. Ancient and reptilian, a hunger ten thousand fathoms deep. Their children spiraled in the waves above their heads, scales of silver, katana teeth. But they themselves didn’t stir. Not once had they woken since first Susano-ō offered to sing them to sleeping.
Their names were lost now to humans, swallowed in the shadows of myth and eon. But the arashitora remembered.
Niah and Aael. Father and mother of all dragons.
Atop the tallest volcano, now sullen and cooled, stood the aerie of the Khan; a series of tunnels in black stone, good and strong and warm. The wind kissed the fissure mouths, singing a haunting tune, all open endless vowels speaking of times long vanished, when Shima was but a dream in Lady Izanami’s womb. Before her death. Before her fall. Before her vow of vengeance.
The whole pack would only gather when the Khan called a greatmoot, or when a female felt her first flushing and time came for the males to fight for her attentions. Then the pack would watch the blooding, the unmated bucks clashing across lightning-flecked skies, the mated males held in check by the musk of their own mates beside them.
