The Last Stormdancer (the lotus war )

by Jay Kristoff

  “Great Lord, I—”

  Tatsuya gunned the chainkatana’s throttle.

  hiss-woosh

  He could swear he heard the Lotusman gulp.

  “Lord Tatsuya, I counsel—”

  The Bull raised the weapon, blades hovering an inch or two from the Guildsman’s throat. He revved the engine again, watching the lanternlight gleam on growling teeth, noting with grudging admiration that the Lotusman did not flinch.

  “Be at ease, Guildsman,” said Tatsuya. “I am not the sort who murders an emissary, no matter how grave the disrespect I or my family are shown. Count yourself fortunate you did not offer this same deal to my brother. The Bear does not share my fondness for clemency.”

  hiss-woosh

  “You do not offer me a triumph, chi-monger. I have already won this war. And you do not offer me my brother’s head, for he is already dead. What you offer is a swifter victory. The avoidance of a siege. And that is worth some consideration, surely, for I have no stomach to starve my own twin to death inside the walls of Blackstone Keep.” Tatsuya met the Guildsman’s eyes. “But I will not give all you ask.”

  Condemned prisoners choose their last meals with less care than the Lotusman used to choose his next words.

  “That you give us anything at all is truly pleasing, great Lord…”

  “This talk of a licensing system. Quality assurance. In this I see wisdom. But you will not build your refineries in my cities. Keep your tarworks and smokestacks out in the wilds where I need not inhale the stench. Nor will I help you ‘cleanse’ any of my citizens for a harmless accident of birth. And I will require approval on any further military projects your Artificers engage in, before the work begins. It is illegal for a commoner to carry a blade longer than a knife in these lands. I cannot fathom how your masters consider it acceptable to be building warships and motorized swords without the Shōgun’s permission.”

  “I will … need to report these requests to my superiors.”

  Tatsuya’s eyes narrowed. “Requests?”

  “Commands, great Lord.”

  “We have time. The Bear has nowhere to run—once your sappers blow the Junsei bridge, of course. I will consider this demolition ample apology for your threats against a son of the Kazumitsu line. Memories of your temerity will sink into the Junsei with the broken stone.”

  “I will give the order to blow the charges as soon as they are in place, great Lord.”

  “Good.” As much warmth lay in the Bull’s smile as in a drift of snow. “I look forward to hearing your superior’s response.”

  “… Hai.”

  The Lotusman bowed low, backing away with his comrade. Out of the tent and out of Tatsuya’s sight, leaving the young Lord in possession of the growling sword. The Bull’s gaze followed their departure, drifting finally down to the weapon idling quietly in his palm. His murmur was soft as bloodstained silk.

  “Lowborn gardeners. Thinking to stake a claim in the rulership of this nation?”

  He gunned the chainkatana throttle, tongue tingling with the kiss of blue-black smoke.

  “Not while I draw breath.”

  * * *

  The monkey-child scab lay below us, sundered by the flow of three sluggish brown rivers. A seething sprawl, little nests of stone and clay and glass, stacked upon each other with no order or reason. A stench drifted up from its nethers, a blue-black haze reminding me of the stinking mouthfuls of black and blood my family coughed as they died, mixed with rot and rust and spice and excrement. I shied away, instinct bidding me turn and fly, fly away from this rats’ nest and the sea of pink and mewling flesh rolling within it.

  What is wrong, friend Koh?

  NOT YOUR FRIEND, MONKEY-CHILD. WISE TO REMEMBER THIS.

  If you will not be mine, I am still yours. That your thoughts are troubled troubles me.

  SCAB BELOW US. YOU LIVE LIKE THIS. CRAWLING OVER ONE ANOTHER LIKE MAGGOTS ON CORPSES.

  We call them cities.

  NOT CARE WHAT YOU CALL.

  Do you see the palace? It will be a grand building. Beautiful.

  ALL LOOK SAME TO ME. HOLE IN GROUND. MONKEY-CHILDREN EVERYWHERE. NOISE AND STINK AND ROT AND DEATH. THIS PLACE WRETCHED.

  Though it shamed me, I felt fear swell at the sight of all those monkey-children, innumerable and hungry. The same fear my Khan must have known—the fear of a predator in the face of an army of ants. No matter how big the tiger, how sharp the bear’s claws, a million mouths can eat the largest of meals.

  Friend Koh—

  NOT FRIEND!

  Great Koh, I will know the palace when I see it.

  CANNOT SEE, FOOLISH BOY. BLIND. WEAK. MEWLING. WRE—

  I can see if you let me. I can see through your eyes.

  I growled, long and low, gliding in wide, aimless circles above that filth-choked pit. The thought of the boy peering out from behind my eyes was an unwelcome one. A frightful one. All this new to me. I had never left the Four Sisters before and now, here I was, some mad, blind boychild astride my back, buoyed by some insane notion of prophecy. A city full of lice below me, probably the same source of sickness that killed my kin. And I was about to dive down into it?

  You will not even know I am there, Koh.

  THEN WHY NOT JUST TAKE? WHY YOU ASK?

  The boy pressed his hands to my feathers, stroked as gentle as a cub’s first breath.

  Friends ask.

  I growled again. Ashamed of my fear. Ashamed I had flown all this way and balked at the last. And so I breathed deep, heart all a-thunder against my ribs. Nodding assent.

  DO IT, THEN. DO AND BE DONE.

  I felt nothing, just as he promised; no sensation of intrusion or invasion. But I heard the boy gasp, felt his breath come quicker, a warm spice of joy and thrill in his thoughts spilling out into my own. I realized this would have been the first he had seen of the world from the air. The first moment he had witnessed all there was laid out below him, stretched from the end of one horizon to the other. The vastness of it all, the tiny lives and tiny moments caught beneath the burning sun, all washing away between the permanence of sky and earth.

  All.

  It is … beautiful.

  SO YOU SAY ABOUT EVERYTHING, BOY.

  To one who lives in the dark, even the tiniest spark is a blessing.

  He ran his hands down my neck, a blinding smile in his thoughts.

  Thank you for this, great Koh.

  PALACE. YOU SEE?

  I see it. The building surrounded by gardens. There on the eastern slopes.

  HOLD ON THEN. TIME AGAINST US. SKYMEET SPEAKING, EVEN NOW. MUST BE SWIFT.

  I dipped my wings, dropping as a stone, feeling the boy’s fear and exhilaration, fingers sunk to the knuckles in the feathers at my neck, a cry boiling inside his belly and finally spilling up over his teeth. A whoop of joy, snatched from his mouth by the rushing wind, lingering long enough to spill over into me. I cannot explain it. Perhaps it was the link of thought between us. Perhaps I had forgotten the simple joy of the skies. But somehow, if only for a moment, his joy became mine.

  We swooped into the thing the boy named palace—a towering nest of stone stained by the blue-black pall lingering in the streets. Gardens with a vague and sickly air, a brook babbling somewhere amidst the graying green. Monkey-samurai with metal skins and shiny sticks rushing from the surrounding walls, from within the structure itself, aiming their pointed steel twigs in our direction. I roared once in warning as we came in to land, gravel crunching beneath my talons. Wings spread, hackles raised in threat, tail lashing as a whip before frightened livestock. And I felt the boy in my mind again, calm as summer dawn, filling me with the same.

  Fear nothing, great Koh. I will speak. They will listen.

  The boy slipped off my back, spoke with loud and clear voice. I could not understand the shaping of his words. Twisting and snarled in my ears; the language of bleating goats and filth-clad hogs. He spoke long, back and forth with the little samurai, voices rising and fa
lling. It seemed the boy grew distressed for a time, thoughts filled with pleading, but finally some understanding filled the place where the jabber-words had rung. And the boy fell still, watching through my eyes as a handful of the men in their flimsy tin suits slipped back inside the nest, leaving us beneath the watchful stare of perhaps two dozen more.

  WHAT HAPPEN?

  The Shōgun is dead. He died four days ago.

  NO NEW MONKEY-KHAN?

  His sons do battle as we speak for the right to sit on the throne. Civil war is raging to the north, my friend. Brother against brother.

  STRONGEST RULE. THRONES BOUGHT WITH BLOOD. OLD KHAN MUST DIE FOR NEW KHAN TO RISE. FOR US AND YOU.

  One son seems to be favorite. His name is Tatsuya, though folk call him the Bull. He chases his brother north, but has left his wife here to speak in his stead. That he controls the Imperial Palace speaks well for his chances of ruling the country.

  AND SHE SPEAK YOU?

  I think—

  The doors to the monkey-child nest groaned wide, revealing a cadre of samurai in tabards the color of blood, armor the hue of midnight, hard, narrowed eyes. Long sticks of folded steel, bows and quivers brimming to burst with arrows. Marching four by four by four. And behind them walked a monkey-child female, smaller and sleeker, long hair blacker than the warrior’s armor bound in needlessly complicated knots and braids.

  She looked soft. Weak. Adorned and decorated, paint upon her face. I noted all the male monkey-children wore iron, carried steel, and yet the only weapon she bore was a fan fashioned of gold. And yet, in Jun’s chest, still I felt the twist of a blade, as surely as she had thrust one between his ribs. A sudden catch in his breath, a surge of butterflies in his stomach murmuring to mine. A sense of recollection, dusty with the weight of years. As he looked upon the monkey-child woman through my eyes, sharp as eagles, hungry as tigers, I think at last he remembered what true beauty was.

  He had seen it before.

  The woman stood atop stone stairs leading up into the nest, robes embroidered with prowling tigers. There was something akin to those jungle cats in her bearing; the way she looked us over, we two. Not astonished and bewildered as all the men about her, slack-jawed in their metal suits. No, she was predatory. Calculating. Perhaps even hungry.

  They spoke then. The boy and the woman. Words I did not understand. At one point, Jun laughed, bowed so low he nearly fell forward on his face. I could not fathom why. But the female spoke with a voice of strength, hiding a blood-red smile behind the fan of gold. And finally, she stepped aside, and gestured to her nest of stone and clay.

  She invites me inside. To speak further.

  TRUST HER?

  She seems impressed by you. I do not believe she would risk harm against me. And remember, friend Koh, we have prophecy on our side.

  I NOT GO INTO NEST WITH NO SKY ABOVE. NOT ARASHITORA WAY.

  Will you wait for me, then?

  I WAIT. SICKNESS MUST END. NO MORE ARASHITORA DIE. YOU TELL HER.

  I will. Fear not.

  FEAR? FOOLISH BOY. GO. MAKE YOUR NOISE. SPEAK YOUR SPEAKINGS. THEN RETURN WITH TELLING OF WHO I MUST KILL.

  Perhaps we need not kill anyone?

  I snorted, snarled; a noise as close to laughter as my kind know. Looking him over, wondering if he saw himself as I did—small and pale and eyeless. Knowing all about his future, and yet knowing nothing at all.

  NOW WHO FEARS, BOY?

  * * *

  The Junsei bridge rumbled as a fat man with a bellyful of bad clams. Trembling in its boots, the water about it rippling with bone-deep vibrations. And with no more warning, the stone supports blew apart like fireworks on a feast day, flame surging magnesium bright in the predawn still. Stone and mortar and dust spraying hundreds of feet skyward, illuminated by the brief flame screaming its birthsong below. Yawning, moaning, sighing, the arches collapsed, one by one by one, crashing into the mud-brown flow with a sodden roar.

  Tatsuya watched from a small hill beside his command tent, turned his spyglass to his brother’s encampment on the hill. A flurry of motion, distant cries, a thousand fingers pointing to the column of smoke marking the beginning of their ends.

  The young Bull turned to his first general. “Ukyo-san, send emissary to my brother. Tell Lord Riku I offer full amnesty to any of his troops who now surrender. Tell him I will guarantee his wife’s safety, and that of his unborn child should he now lay down arms.”

  The old general nodded. “He will refuse, of course, great Lord.”

  “Of course. But I will not have history say I was merciless in victory.”

  The general smiled and bowed. “You will make an admirable Shōgun, great Lord.”

  “Time will tell.”

  Tatsuya saw Maru the Guildsman approaching over uneven ground, his brass-and-leather suit hissing and whirring, bloody eyes aglow. The Guildsman stopped before the Bull, bowed low, hand over fist.

  “Great Lord, my superiors find your conditions most agreeable, and humbly thank you for your gracious considerations. We will aid your noble endeavors in exchange for quality controls and licensing over blood lotus production in Shima. We have drawn up a document,” here the Lotusman proffered a scroll case marked with the Guild’s lotus bloom sigil, “outlining the finer points of the arrangement.”

  “Leave it with my scribes,” Tatsuya said. “I will mark it once your side of the bargain is fulfilled. On this you have my word. I presume the vow of a son of Kazumitsu is acceptable in place of some scribblings upon a page?”

  “… Hai, great Lord,” Maru rasped.

  “Good. Now where are these wonders you promised me?”

  The Lotusman pointed west, his voice a graveled rasp.

  “They approach, great Lord.”

  Tatsuya squinted into the brightening sky, burned by the glow of the rising sun. He could see blunt silhouettes approaching—what looked like tall ships floating on the clouds. In place of sails, the ships had large inflatable balloons, propellers at their flanks, the song of their engines like the hum of distant insects. He had seen inflatable craft before, of course—the Guild had been experimenting with lighter-than-air ships for decades. But this was the first he’d ever seen a ship so obviously outfitted for war. The snouts of what looked like black-powder cannon jutting from their flanks. Armor plating. Faster than any airship he’d laid eyes on.

  He found himself counting his good fortune that the Guild had been so easily cowed.

  “Chainkatana and wakizashi,” said Maru. “Suits of armor augmented by chi-powered motors. Enough to arm every one of your samurai, and cut your brother’s forces down like grass.”

  “See them distributed amongst my elite,” Tatsuya said. “General Ukyo will assist you. We attack within the hour.”

  “As you command.” Maru bowed. “Shōgun.”

  * * *

  “We have no time, Lady Ami. No time left at all.”

  Jun knelt in what felt like a vast space, cool breeze echoing in distant recesses. The whisper of silken amulets moving in the wind. The distant murmur of servants’ footsteps. He could smell the tea placed before him, hear the soft breathing of the woman kneeling opposite. Head turned, eyes downcast, mind still clouded with the recollection of her face.

  Like a portrait from the days when he still had sight; the work of the masters he had studied before the sun took his eyes away. She was smoke and coal. Alabaster and red silk. Lips the color of heartsblood. Irises so black it seemed night itself pooled behind her lashes. The image he had seen through Koh’s eyes, eagle-sharp and tinged with predatory hunger … he feared he would never be rid of it. The music of her voice. The shape of her face.

  All this he remembered.

  And yet now, without the thunder tiger, without his little sparrow, he dwelled in darkness. His other senses sharpened, yet no compensation for the loss of his eyes. Clouded by the urgency coiled tight in his belly, pulsing with every beat of his heart, despite the surety that all this was happening exactly as i
t was meant to. He could feel other presences in the room: a maidservant introduced as Chiyoko, now pouring the tea, guards lining the walls, armor clanking, breathing soft. The quiet creak of the rafters above his head.

  Lady Ami’s voice was low, smoky, his skin prickling at every note.

  “Your name is Jun?” she asked.

  “So my mother named me, great Lady. Before the sickness took her.”

  “From what clan do you hail?”

  He licked his lips. Forced himself to be patient. Courteous. Calm.

  “I am Fox clan, Lady,” he replied. “Born and raised.”

  “Another Kitsune.” Jun heard a smile creep into the Lady’s voice, muffled by the fan she no doubt covered it with. “I am pleased to enjoy the company of a clansman once again. It has been many years since I saw my homeland.”

  “In this, we are equals, Lady Ami-san.”

  “Then you were not born blind, Jun-san?”

  Images of a vast garden. Laughing children. A girl who smiled at him as—

  Jun shook his head to banish the memories.

  “No, Lady. I began losing my sight when I was ten. It took two years to depart. My grandmother blamed the pollution in the sky. The haze that makes Lady Sun burn brighter and hotter. I am told many folk wear goggles now in the north, to protect them from my fate.”

  “That is very sad.”

  “Happier than some. The sickness grows worse with each passing year. It claims lives, not just eyes. My mother and father both fell to it. The people of my village call it blacklung. And it strikes not only humans. The phoenix sicken and die. The mujina and tanuki of the forests, the kappa of the river and lakes, even the thunder tigers—all of them are falling prey.”

  “We hear rumor of this sickness you speak of, Jun-san,” said Lady Ami. “I remember folk of my father’s court falling to it when I was younger. But we had no notion it had grown to such a threat. My father-in-law’s illness, the matter of succession … the Shōgun’s court has been consumed by it in recent times.”

  “I fear the Lotus Guild is to blame for…”

  His voice drifted off as a familiar shape in his mind … no, two … coalesced out of the mists at the edge of his senses and stalked forward into the light. All purring and soft velvet, tread like a faint breeze on the polished boards. He reached out with the Kenning, their thoughts calling to his, recognizing them as cats, male and female, slinking to their mistress’s side and watching him with curious eyes. He touched their minds, bid them greeting, feeling their delight as the Lady Ami ran her fingernails through their fur, their sensual shivers flowing into him.