by Jay Kristoff
And then.
And then …
She began walking. Slowly, blinking, unbelieving. Aleksandar called to her, the soldiers cried “Stormdancer!” as her walk became a jog, then a flat run, one hand at her stomach. She heard nothing. Nothing except the pulse of it. Sprinting now, staggering and stumbling over broken ground, snow and ash all around, blinding, choking. But still she ran, fresh tears in her eyes, not daring to hope, not daring to believe what she could feel with her own mind, reaching out across the Kenning to the faint and fluttering spark somewhere beyond. Running faster than she could have dreamed, feet barely touching the earth, skidding to a stop beside a pile of dirt and ash and twisted metal, still steaming from the heat of the Earthcrusher’s demise.
She could see it in his mind’s eye as she reached him, down on her knees, tearing a sheet of buckled iron aside, clearing away the black slurry and dirt covering him.
The oni legion gathered all around him, the iron giant’s hide crawling with every child of the Endsinger yet moving, belly filled, throat gurgling with them, breaking through the elevator doors. His hands, slamming the throttles forward, bending and jamming them in place. Slipping from the pilot’s harness and diving toward the shattered viewports, down through the broken pane and out into the freezing air. His rockets flaring blue-white, shuddering with exertion as he flew away at full burn. The Earthcrusher’s tortured scream flaring red-hot, then incandescent, the spark catching behind him amidst the deafening detonation of the behemoth’s chi reserves. The blast wave hitting him midair, thrusting him farther away, buoyed on a pillow of fire and shock as the Earthcrusher tore itself apart and incinerated the seething horde around it.
Crashing to earth. Too hurt to move. Almost too hurt to breathe.
Almost.
“Kin,” she sobbed.
He blinked up at her, face caked with ash and soot. He tried to speak, but no words would come, cracked lips painted white. And there, in that sea of gray, his head cradled in her arms, he fixed his gaze on hers, watching with those knife-bright eyes. She could feel it within him, even if he couldn’t speak it.
Even in the midst of all this death, there is life.
He lifted his hand, clad in beaten brass, and gentle as falling snow, he wiped away her tears. And he smiled.
There is love.
54
EULOGY
Sumiko prayed.
Head bowed before the shrine of Susano-ō. Begging he would not cover Lady Sun’s face today, that rolling gray would not cast a shadow across the muddy purple of the sky. Today there must be light. Today there must be warmth. Lady Amaterasu must burn bright in the heavens, smiling on the festivities to come.
She heard floorboards creaking, the shrine door sliding open. Faint birdsong in the garden, her children playing amidst the struggling trees. It had been a good winter—the rains had fallen heavy, washing yet more poison from the skies above, falling from the heavens no longer in floods of reeking black, but of fading, injured gray. The air was light today, a hint of freshness and new green amidst the lingering chi stains. She’d noted some people had even stopped wearing kerchiefs and breathers in spring, but Sumiko still insisted her girls not play outside unprotected. The memory of her mother’s passing, the black she’d coughed at her ending would never truly fade. All wounds heal with the passing of long years, but it would be some time yet before the air was clear enough to risk her loves outside.
She’d lost too much already.
Everyone had.
Footsteps across the floorboards, bringing a smile to her lips. Her husband knelt behind her, put his arms around her, kissed her neck. She leaned back into him, felt the muscle and cable at play beneath his skin, ran her thumb over the empty input jack at his wrist.
“Shinji,” she sighed.
“Are you ready, love? It would not do to be late.”
“I’m ready,” she smiled.
“Then come.”
* * *
A hundred flags and a thousand ribbons and ten thousand smiling faces.
People were gathered in the fields outside Kigen city; an endless sea, rolling and shifting like the gray waters of the bay. Clan banners whipping in the wind—the sigils of the Tiger, Fox and Phoenix alongside the twisting design of the Serpent clan—a viper eating its own tail, forming an endless, unbroken circle. Though small in number, the remnants of the Lotus Guild had built their homes in the ruins of Dragon lands, setting up new factories with the help of Morcheba’s Ordo-Mechanika. After a decade of toil and failure, at last the works were producing marvels for the populace; creations born of ingenuity and alliance with the gaijin technicians, powered not by the deadly bloom that had brought their nation close to ruin, but by the same fuel the Morchebans had almost conquered the country with.
A gift from the sky.
The people had traveled from every corner of the islands—jammed into carriages aboard the new lightning-rail, or booking passage on the new airships being produced in the Serpent machine works. There was no man or woman or child alive who wished to miss this day, this glorious moment in their nation’s history—the moment Lady Yukiko would stand before the people and heal the last patch of deadlands in all of the Shima Isles.
Every heart beat faster, every breath came quicker at the thought. Though she’d worked tirelessly in the decade since the Lotus War ended, traveling from province to province, town to town, she never lingered long, and very rarely spoke publically. She traveled with a small entourage it was said—just her children, a historian and a handful of volunteers. Beginning in the north and working her way south, months melting into years, ashes before her, and only good, dark soil in her wake. It had been over ten years since Sumiko saw her—that day she’d never forget, when the Stormdancer arrived on her arashitora in Kigen’s Market Square and bid the nation to raise their fists. As their train pulled into Kigen Station, Sumiko wondered how the years had treated her, the marks the war had left behind.
She disembarked, forced her way through the throng, Shinji beside her, daughters between. Though her husband was a chief of production in the Serpent machine works, he insisted they travel by lightning-rail, just like everyone else. No special treatment. No man above another. But as a hero in the Lotus War, as one of the rebels who’d sabotaged the Earthcrusher and saved Kitsune-jō, Shinji was to be afforded a special place in the celebrations today.
The thought made Sumiko’s heart swell with pride.
They were met by Tora bushimen, the fresh soldiers bowing low. There was something close to awe in their eyes as the young men escorted Sumiko and her family to the gala grounds outside Kigen. A massive stage had been erected, semicircular in shape, shrouded at its rear by a large curtain of billowing black silk. It encircled a tiny crop of ruined land—rumor spoke it had once been a lotus farm, won years before by some Burakumin soldier in a Kitsune smoke house, and then left to rot. The crowd was gathered around it—a sea of people stretching for miles, all bright eyes and smiling faces. Vendors moved through the throng, selling saké and barley wine, sushi and rice cakes, pork and crackling and sticks of sauced beef—produce from the midlands breadbasket where once the Stain had lay, now known as Yoshi Province.
Sumiko looked around the stage at the other players, unbelieving at the company she found herself keeping. She’d read the history of the Lotus War of course, but to be standing in the presence of the man who had completed it set her heart to fluttering. The Blackbird was every bit as impressive as Shinji had told her, tall and broad, his graying beard spilling over his girth, his laughter felt somewhere deep in her chest. He was busy flirting with several young ladies of the Tora court, their blushing cheeks hidden behind fluttering fans. An old hound sat beside him, wagging his tail. Sumiko smiled, and despite her desire to speak to the great historian, resolved not to interrupt.
Misaki caught her eye, bowed to her, to Shinji, and Sumiko returned the smile, walking over for a swift embrace and a kiss to each cheek. The silver arms at Mi
saki’s back rippled, the woman’s smile like bruised strawberries, her cheeks aglow. Her daughter, Suki, stood close by, tall and elegant, long hair bound into braids and held fixed by brass rings.
“I feel utterly out of place up here,” Sumiko whispered.
“No more than I,” Misaki smiled. “But be at peace, sister. Today is a good day.”
Sumiko squeezed her friend’s hand, turning back to the others she shared the stage with. She saw the Daimyo of the Tora court opposite her, fierce as the Tigers her clan was named for. Dressed in a blood-red kimono and an iron breastplate, long hair drawn back in a braid, steel-gray eyes matching the wakizashi and katana she wore at her waist, golden cranes in flight down the black lacquer. She wore no makeup, made no attempt to hide the long, jagged scar cutting through her beautiful features.
At her side stood a fierce-looking gaijin man dressed in the robes of a courtly emissary, his face a patchwork of scars. But when he smiled, which was often, Sumiko could see the kindness in him. And when he whispered into the Daimyo’s ear, she would smile too.
A small girl ran out from behind the black silken curtain, chased by a younger boy, and Daimyo Kaori knelt, held her arms wide. The pair ran to her arms, all the cold and ferocity melting from her face, kissing each brow and holding them tight.
“Michi, you behave better around your brother,” she half-scolded. “Daichi is not so old as you. You must set an example.”
The little girl bowed. “I will, Mother.”
Kissing the boy again, the Daimyo stood, searching the eastern horizon. Pulling down her goggles, she raised one hand against the glare—still harsh after a decade of industry without chi. The wounds of land and sky were healing slowly, but none knew for sure if the scars would ever truly fade from sight. The sun still burned kiln-hot. The rivers faded from black to gray, but not to crystal clear. And though the ocean and sky longed to return to their brilliant blue, it seemed they might never rid themselves of blood’s hue.
A figure walked through the crowd toward Shinji, a smile on his face, reflected in knife-bright eyes. Speaker for the Serpent clan. First amongst equals.
“My friend,” Kin said, holding his arms wide.
“My brother,” Shinji replied, hugging him fiercely.
The pair embraced, eyes closed for a long, silent moment. Kin was dressed in a simple black kimono, a leather obi at his waist arrayed with all manner of tools. Dark cropped hair and black, twinkling eyes, the skin on his hands marred by a slight sheen—the mark of awful burns earned in years long past. But there was no trace of that old pain in his eyes as he turned to Sumiko, bowed low, looking at each of her daughters in turn.
“It is good to see you again, Sumiko.” He knelt by her daughters, shyly peering out at him behind curtains of long, dark hair. “My, you two ladies have grown!”
“It is good to see you also, Kin-sama.” Sumiko bowed from the knees.
Kin smiled, holding up one scarred hand. “Just Kin.”
“Where is your Lady, brother?” Shinji gestured to the massive crowd gathered around the stage. “The whole country waits for her appearance.”
“You know her. Dramatic entrances are her favorite. The later, the better.”
“I remember,” Shinji smiled.
Sumiko looked again over the restless crowd, murmurs rippling through the throng. She could feel an electricity in the air, butterflies tumbling in her stomach. A gentle spring breeze kissed her skin, the soft perfume of young flowers and new life running fingers through her hair.
And then she heard it. A lone voice, crying aloud, a single word that dragged her back a decade to Kigen’s Market Square, to the day she’d raised her fist in the air and witnessed the birth of a legend.
“Arashitora!”
The cry spread; a fire on bone-dry tinder, blooming like wisteria and laden with promise. All eyes turned eastward, every finger pointing, every mouth open in wonder, every heart lifted from the shackles of its mortal shell and set to singing.
“Arashitora!” they cried.
The majestic figure flew toward them out of the rising sun, circling above, its wings making the sound of thunder. It was sleek as knives, cutting the air like folded steel, dipping and swooping to the crowd’s delight, awe and joy written on every face. And as the beast came in to land, talons shredding the fresh earth near the ruins of the little farmstead, Sumiko caught sight of the rider astride it.
A beautiful woman, slender and graceful, moving like a dancer as she slipped down from the arashitora’s back. Her skin was pale as Iishi snow, hair rippling in the wind like molten gold, a ribbon of sunlight framing her impish features. She was clad in iron; an embossed breastplate set with the sigil of a stag with three crescent horns, a golden amulet around her neck bearing the same. A band of black leather covered one eye, the other settling on the Speaker of the Serpent clan as he leapt down off the stage and caught the woman in his embrace.
“Hana,” Kin said.
The woman closed her eye, hugged Kin tight. When she spoke, her consonants were hard, a hint of the Morcheban accent creeping into her inflections and tone.
“It is good to see you again, my friend.”
“How fares your family?” Kin asked as they parted.
“Well enough,” Hana smiled. “My eldest insisted she ride here with me, though she stands only five summers deep. Screamed for hours when I told her she couldn’t come. She has the fire of the Goddess, that one.”
Sumiko gazed at the arashitora looming behind the woman, peering down at Kin with bright, amber eyes. The beast was impossibly beautiful; deep bands of black marking her hindquarters, feathers possessed of a wondrous opalescence. But the feathers around her eyes were graying, the black in her stripes running to charcoal. Sumiko was filled with melancholy to look at her—the last thunder tiger, as frail and mortal as anyone. Time would claim brave Kaiah, as it would claim them all. What would be left, when the last stormdancer was gone?
“Where is your lady, Kin-san?” Hana said. “Where is my sister?”
“Here I am,” said a voice.
The black curtain parted, sunlight gleaming on rippling silk. And there she stood, quiet and fragile and beautiful. A simple kimono of embroidered black flowed off her shoulders, hugged her waist, the handle of a black lacquered tantō at her hip. She was thin, pale as wisteria blooms. Her hair flowed about her face like black water, rolling down her back in waves. Her face was careworn, her eyes tired, but still, they blazed with light at the sight of her friend, the smile on her face as fierce as the Lady Amaterasu’s light.
At her side, two children stood, a boy and a girl perhaps ten years old, both tall and beautiful, black hair and pale skin. She held a third child in her arms, little more than a toddler—a boy with bright inquisitive eyes as sharp as knives. All three were looking at the arashitora, spellbound, the thunder tiger dipping her head as if to bow.
The crowd was awash with jubilation, cheering wildly at the sight of the woman and her children, the legend made flesh. She looked over the mob and smiled, raising one fist in the air. The gesture was returned, ten thousand fists and a single name, shouted over and over again.
“Yukiko!”
“Yukiko!”
When the frenzy abated, after what seemed an impossible age, the twins looked up at their mother, an unspoken question in their eyes.
“Go on, then,” Yukiko nodded.
The twins whooped and dashed away, jumping off the stage and running to the arashitora’s side. They stopped a handful of paces away, staring at the mighty Kaiah with wide eyes, holding out their hands together, palms outward. The thunder tiger stalked toward the pair and lowered her head, flared her wings, pushing her cheeks against one palm and then another to euphoric roars from the crowds.
Yukiko made her way down off the stage, a frailty in her tread. Kin stepped up beside her, took the babe from her arms, and Hana fairly flew into her embrace. Both women were weeping, holding each other as a drowning man clutches floa
ting tinder.
“I knew you’d come,” Yukiko breathed.
“Even if all the oni in the Hells stood in the way.”
“I missed you, sister.”
The pair parted, Hana turned to the twins standing beside Kaiah, wondering at the luster of her fur, the softness of her feathers.
“Hello, Masaru,” the woman said. “Naomi. You don’t remember me, do you?”
The children stared mute, as children are wont to do, and Hana laughed, loud and fierce, a glint of lightning in her eye. She turned to Kin, to the little boy in his arms, reaching out to caress the child’s cheek.
“And who are you, little man?”
“His name is Arashi,” Yukiko said.
“Arashi,” Hana smiled. “‘Storm.’ Very fitting.”
Yukiko motioned to the small tract of deadlands around them. In the distance, thunder rolled, the edges of the sky darkening with the press of an oncoming storm.
“Shall we do this? Before the rain?”
“I still remember this place,” Hana sighed. “Our house was right over there. Broken windows and broken dreams…”
“Then let’s be rid of it. And all shadows of the past alongside.”
Hana nodded, took Yukiko’s hand and walked to the edge of the deadlands, Kin beside them. A thin wash of black vapor roiled on the surface, feeble and near translucent in the light of the sun. But still it lingered—the last mark of blood lotus left in Shima. Tora bushimen stood vigil around the perimeter, but there was no crush to touch the stormdancers. A strange hush descended over the crowd, a gravity that took hold and pulled them back down to earth, all jubilance and joy stilling, silence echoing in the mournful breeze, laden with the promise of distant storms.
Yukiko brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. Her lips were bloodless, and she seemed so small amidst that sea of people—somehow utterly lost. But she reached out for Kin’s hand, smiling as he placed a gentle kiss on her brow. She looked to the children at his side, the people gathered up on the stage behind her. All of them wounded, but walking still. And she drew a deep breath, and she spoke, and her voice was strong as the roar of a thunder tiger.
