by Jay Kristoff
The second, a widowed bride. Her belly swollen with her beloved’s child. Still dressed in the mourning black, barely a month since her husband’s passing.
Standing together, heads bowed, speaking softly.
A third figure, hidden in the shadows. Quiet as whispers. Still as stone. A bloody sword clutched in her white-knuckle grip.
She watched them. The pair. Speaking in hushed tones. Dread and disbelief in her belly. Recalling his face in the battle’s aftermath, drenched in blood. The gentle kiss he had placed on her brow—the first touch from him she had felt in years.
That should have been enough.
She was certain now. But she had to see.
The pair of them. Soft voices. A wicked, curling smile.
A hand, placed on a swollen belly.
Lips, upturned to a gentle kiss.
The Shōgun removing his golden tiger mask, the face beneath one she recognized at last. Almost identical to his brother’s. A near perfect symmetry. But still, she should have known …
Not a bull upon the throne.
A bear in a bull’s skin.
Curse me for a fool.
And just as certain, the thought that pulled her back from the brink.
The truth that loosened her grip on the blade’s hilt, and all desire here to remain.
No one will believe me …
* * *
I was not there that day.
I did not see him dragged through the streets before a wondering crowd. The figures in leather and brass on either side of him. Eyes of bloody-red glass. The four stones, newly erected in the Market Square. The mob gathered around it, as if some new sport. The blind boy there chained, eyes open and seeing nothing at all.
I did not hear the figures in their white tabards, reading of “impurity” from ancient and twisted scripture. Proclaiming a new order, a new law, set with the Shōgun’s seal. I did not hear their lies. The feeble justifications for atrocity you monkey-children so love to weave. I did not hear the sound of the flames flaring at their wrists. The tinder beneath him crackling.
His screams.
I did not smell the blackening meat, the burning hair, the charring bones.
I did not touch the cooling remains when all was said and mercifully done.
I did not taste the ashes on my tongue.
I was not there.
I did not see, nor hear, not smell, nor touch, nor taste. Not any of it.
So how do I know, you ask?
Foolish monkey-child.
Death told me.
* * *
Ninety-nine years after the birth of the Kazumitsu Dynasty, at the beginning of a boiling summer, I watched a twenty-two-year-old woman limp to the highest summit of the Four Sisters Mountains.
Not the most spectacular of finales, I will grant you. Not one to bring audiences to their feet, rippling with vibrant applause. Not the way a story about heroes should finish. And you need not be availed of facts about how high the peaks, or how hard the trek or how the skies around those magnificent mountains were prone to rain samurai.
All this, you already know.
She was dressed in heavy black cloth and furs. Eyes hidden from the burning sun behind goggles of dark glass. A heavy cowl pulled up over her newly shorn hair.
But still I recognized her.
Seated at my Khan’s right flank, I was. Raising my head at the warning cries of our scouts, Rahh’s tail whipping in agitation. Curled there in his warmth, the embers of my first flushing still glowing faint. And beside me, he, the one I had chosen when it pressed upon me with all its insistent heat.
We do not know love as you, monkey-child.
But that is not to say we do not know love.
A summer storm was gathered above our heads, cooling showers to wash away the smoke curling ever upward from the monkey-scabs below. Thunder pressed down on us like our father’s smiles. Butterflies in our bellies. The taste of home.
And now the Lady Ami, here in my Khan’s court. No sign of Jun beside her. Confusion in my thoughts. Cool dread in my heart. What had happened, that she was here alone?
“Koh?”
Rahh looked at me, at the Lady, growl seething in his chest.
“Be still my Khan,” I said. “I will seek the truth of it.”
Down onto the snow I bounded, to stand before the Shōgun’s bride. She did not make your jabber speakings with her monkey-tongue. She did not try to tell me what had happened. But from within the folds of her travel-stained robes, she drew a thin cane of polished pine. Dried blood upon the blade. Dried blood upon the hilt.
His blood.
“Koh?”
The Lady reached inside the obi wrapped at her belt. Drew forth a small sack of dark cloth. Loosening the binds at its throat and upending it there before my widening eyes. Sandy gray spilling forth, out into the wind, snatched and scattered by the howling gale, dusted upon our faces, hers and mine. Ashes, I realized.
His ashes.
No.
The beginnings of it, a growl. Deep in my belly. Boiling and burning, monkey-child, like the brightest flame. White-hot and incendiary. Demanding release. Rumbling up through my chest, churning and seething, tearing from my throat with all the strength I could muster. A roar to shake the very stones, reverberating across the mountainside. A roar to begin avalanches, to send boulders of ice crumbling free and crashing into the canyons below, all Four Sisters trembling with the fury of it. And I raised my talons, set to seize and tear and shake like a doll of rags and bones and bloody—
“They killed Jun.”
I turned to Rahh, my eyes ablaze.
“THEY KILLED HIM.”
Rahh stood tall, hackles raised, talons crushing the stone at his feet to dust. A snarl, wings flared wide.
“Then they die. All die. Jun your friend. Your brother. We avenge. We fight.”
Rahh roared, a long, grating call, echoing amongst the peaks. A call to battle. To war. For every buck to take to the wing, to spill blood and strike fear into the hearts of—
“No,” I said.
Rahh cocked his head.
“No?”
My growl shook the very stones around me.
“They blind. All. Blind, Rahh. Monkey-Khan promise to end sickness. Sky grows redder by day. Sun burning brighter. Smoke thicker. They lie to us. They use. Think us beasts. Think us fools. And if we stay here? If we fight when their own Khan will not? Then fools we are.”
“I gave word,” Rahh growled. “Khan’s word is law.”
“Not stay here. Not fight.”
“You not asked to fight. Males fight. Females breed. Such is our way.”
“Foolish way!” I snarled.
“This again? Not speak so, no! I your Khan. You obey. Khan’s word is law!”
The bucks gathering about us now, flying in from the corners of the Four Sisters. The skies above us filled with the thunder of their wings. I recalled flying with Jun on my back. Those brief and precious days of freedom. Anything and everything possible between us. We were supposed to save the world, he and I. We were supposed to change everything. That was our destiny.
And I looked then, at the ashes scattered in the snow. Smudged upon the face of this tiny monkey-child before me, just as wounded and lost as I. And I hated her. Her and all her wretched race. Their greed and their blindness and their pride. Their faith and their dreams and their foolish hope. All of it. They deserved to burn. To suffer. To die choking in the funeral shroud of their own weaving.
Jun was dead. The prophecy a lie. There was no saving this place.
Why in the name of all would I doom myself and my own to linger here?
“I challenge,” I snarled.
Rahh blinked. Eyes narrowed.
“What you say?”
“I CHALLENGE!”
“Foolish. Females not challenge. Females not fight. Females not—”
I did not wait for him to finish. Did not wait for him to list yet another thing I could not shou
ld not would not do. Instead I roared, hackles flaring, wings spread, and charged into him with all my might. We collided like thunderheads, the crack of bone, the hiss of breath, a splash of blood. Lightning cracking at the edges of our feathers as we flew off the mountainside, a tumbling, snarling flurry. He tried to break away, roaring at me to stop, to hold, to think.
But I could not think. I could not feel. I could not breathe.
All I tasted was blood.
All I saw was red.
And all I knew was rage.
And here at last, we find our place, little monkey-child. Here, where we first stepped out upon the stage.
I plummeted from the sky, wind clawing at my eyes. Warm and scarlet painted thick upon my tongue. Wings pressed tight to my flanks, lighting crackling along my feathertips. Roaring, bellowing like the storm itself, impossible brightness cracking the skies, black clouds closing at my back. My talons locked with his. My friend. My foe. Our plumage dipped in crimson and fluttering in our wake as we flailed and bit and kicked. Descending.
Mountains loomed below us. Jagged peaks rising from the rolling mist of rain and ashen smoke, snow-clad teeth set to tear us to pieces. But still we struggled. Chained together by my rage, my hatred, unwilling to let him go. At the last, he broke away, kicking loose in a shower of blood. I spread my wings, felt the wind cup my feathers, distant pain from the wounds he had torn in me stealing my breath. He was ever my match. Even when we were cubs, the stripes at our haunches still muddy gray. Not my blood. But yet my brother.
And now, my enemy.
We leveled out, circled each other through the rain. He called to me, voice as loud as the storm, my blood in his mouth.
“Stop this, Koh. Stop this madness.”
I growled reply between the thunder claps.
“Only three ways this will end.”
“I am Khan here,” he roared. “Khan’s word is law.”
“Then kill me.”
“Never.”
“Then die.”
I tore across the sky toward him, tempest at my back. All around us was chaos, the voices of our packmates raised, eyes watching the drama unfold. We collided like comets, like falling, burning stars. I dug my talons into his flesh, knuckle deep. He tore at my shoulder, blood brighter than the poisoned sun, and we became snarls and shrieks and roars, all a-tumble across the sky. Lightning rocked the clouds, gleaming in his eyes as we plummeted toward teeth of stone. His beak closing about my throat. Mine about his.
My friend. My enemy. My Khan.
“Stop this!” he growled.
“Not stay here. Not fight. Not lose you or myself or the ones growing within me.”
A silence, then. Long as years.
“… What?”
“Will not let us die here.”
“You lifebearer?”
“Your cubs, Rahh. Yours and mine.”
The stones rising to meet us. Open grinning mouths. Teeth of black rock, smiling as wide as the sky.
“Wish to fight for the right to see them born still?” I asked.
His eyes on mine.
“Die mewling inside cracked shell too thin to hold them?”
My eyes on his.
“Monkey-children not worth that.”
“But I vowed,” he said. “Khan’s word is law.”
Seconds from impact.
“Then be not Khan,” I said. “And my word be law.”
He spread his wings, snarling, momentum and gravity tearing at his joints. Pulling us back, away from death’s velocity and rolling, just as I had taught him when we young, flipping himself beneath me as we collided with the mountainside. The crunch of year-deep drifts of snow, the splintering crack of ice and stone beneath. The impact knocking all from our lungs, pressing me to him, blood and feathers and fur. And there on his back he lay, wings spread in the deep frost about us, throat exposed. At my mercy.
The pack gathered about us, soaring down from the Aerie above, astonished cries and fearful roars. The Khan, bested by a female? Never in our history had such a thing come to pass. What could it mean? What could it portend?
Understand, monkey-child; the title of Khan is never given. Always taken. Bought with murder. And for me to claim his title, I should have claimed Rahh’s life. He knew it to be so. My rule would be bought with his death. Such was our way.
But mine would be a new way.
“Enough death. Not for this. Not kill you, Rahh. Too few of us left. Too much lost already.”
My roar echoed on the stone around me, in the sky above me, my grandfather’s ghost hanging in the air beside me.
“Arashitora do not kill arashitora! No more. Khan’s word is law!”
Rahh dragged himself to his feet, bloodied and bruised, shaking the snow from his fur. Ragged breath boiling the air between us. Thunder echoing in rolling clouds as the others gathered on the stones about us, wide eyed, hackles raised as Rahh lowered head in deference.
“Khan’s word is law.”
I looked about my kin. Rage burning in my chest. Flame in my eyes.
“Not stay here. Fight no more. Why we help them, when they not help themselves? When they destroy all beautiful and pure?”
Rahh’s voice was low, and keen-edged.
“Certain this about them? Not about him?”
I growled long and low. The truth striking closer to my heart than he could know.
“This about us.”
I looked to my belly, to the lives I could already feel swelling inside there. To the two futures laid before them—one beneath this sweltering bloody sky in a land run through with poison and gleaming brass. The other, I did not know where. North perhaps, where the dragons fled. A different land. A different future. One at least where they might have a chance to breathe.
Rahh pressed his cheek to mine. Nodded slow.
“Us.”
* * *
We took her back to the land of her birth. The land of the Kitsune clan. The Lady Ami upon my shoulders, the last monkey-child ever to sit there. The island that had been our home laid out below, bloodred and turning slowly to rot. My eyes were ever on the land beneath. The smog creeping into the soft valleys. The beginnings of a decay; a blackening that even then was beginning to take seed, and in years to come, would grow so much worse.
But the Lady Ami’s eyes were on the horizon. The edge of the sky. What might be. What could still be. One hand pressed to the curve of her belly.
We found it where he said we would—at the edge of a murmuring forest, by the banks of a chuckling stream. A tiny house, a thatched roof, a crooked door. Beast skins hung on racks outside the walls. An old woman and an older man, both browned and wizened by the sun. The woman bent with years, almost blind. The man tall and wiry, still possessed of a hunter’s spirit, sweeping up his spear and watching me with wide and terrified eyes as I came in to land.
Lady Ami slipped off my shoulders, sank slowly to the ground. Though we could not speak, still she knew this was an ending. Tears in her eyes. Empty hands upturned toward me. Dragging what she could of a smile along bloodless, trembling lips.
But the taste of ashes lingered on my tongue. The taste of death you monkey-children had carved for yourselves with the petals of bloodred flowers. So I took to the wing. My mate and all my pack beside me. Turning away from your prophecies and destinies, your greed and your blindness, turning our eyes instead to the fateless horizon. A place we could make our own. A future, our own to decide.
And we did not look back.
Arashitora live long years, monkey-child. And my years were good ones. Bright ones. Spent in a place where the storm endlessly raged. Where our father Raijin beat upon his drums with all the fury of the heavens. Rahh and I knew joy. Our cubs growing fierce and proud and strong away from your choking sky. Our kind spared the extinction awaiting us if we had lingered beneath that ceiling of bloody red. And when he left me, when he lay down his head and slept forevermore, I was there beside him, my wings around him, my stripes sl
owly turning gray.
Those twilight years were tinged, yes, I admit, with a hint of regret. That I was not there to save Jun as he died. That his prophecy, his destiny—that a child of his grandmother’s line would one day save the world with an army of thunder tigers behind him—had proven false. It was a grand dream. A bright dream. But not, I thought, a true dream.
Because I did not know, monkey-child, you see? I did not know.
I did not know of the sweet collision between Jun and Ami that night amidst the lotus blooms. I did not know the seed of it grew in the Lady’s womb, nor that it would fruit into a fine and healthy son. I did not know he would be raised a hunter by his great-grandfather, nor that his grandson would inherit not only his craft, but also Jun’s gift.
A gift he would pass on to his only daughter.
But I know her name, monkey-child.
Just as you do.
I know it as I lay here, watching the endless storm rage above a night-black sea. I know it as the wind howls me a lullaby, old as the stars, singing to my weary bones of a time when I flew free and wild and strong, a boy as light as twig and tinder upon my shoulders, the whoop of his joy spilling into me as we plummeted together from the clouds.
I know it as I know my children, their children, swooping and wheeling in the skies above my head.
I know it as I know myself.
I know it as I close my eyes.
I know Jun was not the last Stormdancer.
And how do I know?
Foolish monkey-child.
Death told me.
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