by Jay Kristoff
High cheekbones and steel-gray eyes. Dressed in dappled forest-green. An elegant, old-fashioned wakizashi sword at her waist, a scabbard embossed with golden cranes in flight. A long, black fringe cut to fall over one side of her face, almost concealing the jagged diagonal knife scar running from forehead to chin.
Another of Yoritomo’s legacies.
“Kaori.”
Daichi’s daughter lurked in the near darkness, wary eyes locked on the thunder tiger.
“He won’t hurt you,” Yukiko said. “Come in.”
Kaori hovered for a few uncertain moments, then slipped past Buruu as quickly as she could. The arashitora watched her, amber stare glittering. His metal-clad wings twitched, and he lay his head back down with a sigh and a hiss of pistons, tail sweeping in broad, lazy arcs.
The bedroom was ten feet square, unvarnished wood, wide windows looking out into a sea of night. The perfume of dried wisteria mingled with sweet candle smoke, doing their best to banish the pulsing ache at Yukiko’s temples. She lay back in her unmade bed with a sigh.
“The lookouts told me you had returned,” Kaori said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come see you and Daichi-sama. I was tired.”
The woman looked her over with a critical eye, lips pressed tightly together. Her stare lingered on the empty saké bottle at the foot of the bed.
“You look awful. Are you unwell?”
“The Guild ships are dealt with.” Yukiko’s arm was slung over her face, words muffled in her sleeve. “They’re no threat to us anymore.”
“Your Guildsman is resting. He is torn. Bruised. But Old Mari says he will recover.”
“He’s not my Guildsman. He’s not a Guildsman anymore at all.”
“Indeed.”
“My thanks, anyway.” Her tone softened. “Your father honors me with his trust. I know what it means to have Kin here.”
“I sincerely doubt that, Stormdancer.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Uncomfortable silence fell between them, broken only by the whisper of dry leaves, the thunder-rumble breath of the arashitora outside. Yukiko kept her arm over her eyes, hoping to hear Kaori’s retreating footsteps. But the woman simply hovered, like dragonflies in the bamboo valley where Yukiko had spent her childhood. Poised. Motionless.
Finally, Yukiko dragged herself upright with an exasperated sigh. Pain flared at the base of her skull, claws curling up through her spinal cord.
“I’m tired, Kaori-san.”
“Thirsty too, no doubt.” Steel-gray eyes flickered to the empty saké bottle. “But we have news from our agents in Kigen city.”
She sensed the hesitation in Kaori’s scorn. The weight.
“Is Akihito all right?”
“Well enough. He cannot escape Kigen while rail and sky-ship traffic is locked down. But the local cell is looking after him.” Kaori walked to the window, avoided her reflection in the dark glass. “The city is in chaos. The Tiger bushimen can barely maintain the peace. We get new recruits every day. Talk of war is everywhere.”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? The body thrashing without its head.”
“The Guild seek to grow it a new one.”
Yukiko blinked through the headache blur. “Meaning what?”
The woman sighed, clawing her fringe over her face, kohl-rimmed eyes downcast.
“I take little pleasure in telling you this…”
“Telling me what, Kaori?”
The woman looked at her palms, licked her lips. “Lord Hiro is alive.”
Yukiko felt the words as a blow to her stomach, a cold fist of dread knocking the wind from her lungs. She felt the room spin, the floor fall away into a beckoning nothing. And yet somehow, she managed to sway to her feet, to hold her center and pretend she didn’t feel like a stranger clawing at the insides of someone else’s skin.
She could see him in her memory, lying on sweat-stained sheets, the light of a choking moon playing on planes of smooth skin and taut muscle. His lips, soft as clouds and tasting of salt, pressed against hers in midnight’s hush. Peeled back from his teeth as she drove her blade into his chest, as Buruu’s beak sheared his right arm from his shoulder in a spray of hot crimson.
How could it be? He was dead. They killed him.
I killed him.
“Gods,” she whispered. “My gods…”
“I am sorry,” Kaori said, still staring into the dark. “We hear but whispers. We only have one operative left who can move freely within the palace grounds. But we know Hiro is one of three seeking the title of Daimyo. Rumor tells he has the full backing of the Lotus Guild. Once he secures position as clanlord, he will claim the Shōgun’s throne.”
“But that’s madness.” Yukiko tried to swallow, her mouth dry as desert dust. “Why would any of the other clanlords support him?”
“Their oaths of fealty bind them to the Kazumitsu Dynasty.”
“But Hiro is not of Kazumitsu’s blood. The dynasty died with Yoritomo.”
“There is one of Kazumitsu’s line who still lives.”
Yukiko frowned, trying to clear her thoughts. To focus. Buruu was on his feet, growling, his heat echoing through the corridors of her mind. She could feel the nightbirds beyond the window glass. Monkeys flitting across the trees. Tiny lives and tiny heartbeats—hundreds of them, bright and burning in the Kenning. So hard to think. To shut them out. To breathe.
“I don’t…”
“Aisha lives.”
A flash of memory in her mind’s eye. Yoritomo in Kigen arena. His eyes dancing with hate. Wiping his hand across the bleeding gouges on his cheek.
“No, my sister refused to betray you. And still she dared to beg me for mercy.”
Yukiko bent double, hands on her knees.
“She found none.”
Black flowers bloomed in her eyes, unfurling in time with the strobing pain in her skull.
YUKIKO?
“Hiro will cement his claim by joining the dynastic bloodline through its last surviving daughter.” Kaori spoke as if her words were a eulogy. “He and Aisha are to be wed.”
The dark fell still. Sudden and silent as death. No nightsong. No wind. A wet thump rang out in the room and Kaori flinched, squinting through the bedroom window to the black beyond. A small splash of blood was smeared on the glass. Another thump, against the far wall. Another.
And another.
She turned toward the girl, saw her doubled over in pain.
“Yukiko?”
YUKIKO!
A sparrow smashed itself against the window, colliding headfirst and dashing its skull open against the glass. Another bird followed, another, as dozens upon dozens of tiny bodies slammed into the bedroom walls, the ceiling, the glass. Kaori drew her wakizashi, blade gleaming in the candlelight, turning in circles, her face thin with fear as the pounding of flesh against wood became thunderous. A rain of soft, breathing bodies and brittle bones.
“Maker’s breath, what is this devilry?”
Yukiko was on her knees, hands pressed to her temples, forehead to the floor. Eyes shut tight, features twisted, teeth bared. She could hear them all—a thousand heartbeats out in the dark, a thousand lives, a thousand fires, hotter than the sun. Their voices in her skull, nausea rising black and greasy in the pit of her stomach, overlaid with the taste of his lips, the bitter words he had spoken right before she killed him, she killed him, gods, I killed him.
“Good-bye, Hiro…”
SISTER.
Buruu. Make them stop.
THEM? IT IS YOU. THIS IS YOU.
Me?
YOU ARE SCREAMING. STOP SCREAMING.
“Stop it,” she breathed.
Kaori took hold of her shoulder, squeezed tight. “Yukiko, what is happening?”
Hearts beating in thin, feathered chests. Blood pumping beneath fur and skin. Smashing themselves against the walls, falling broken and bloodied toward a grave of fallen leaves. Eyes burning bright, teeth gnashing, the girl inside the
ir head screaming and screaming and screaming and they had to make it stop because it hurt what does she want why won’t she stop make her stop make her stop.
“Yukiko, stop it.”
SISTER, STOP IT.
Knuckles and pulses and a thousand, thousand sparks.
“Stop it!”
Her scream rang out in the darkness, her eyes wide and bloodshot, hair splayed in dark tendrils across her face. Silence fell like a hammer, broken only by the sound of small, still-warm bodies tumbling down into the darkness below. Bright spots of red spattered on the boards between her knees. She reached up to her nose, felt sticky warmth smeared down her lips. Pulse throbbing in her temples in time to the song of her heart, Buruu’s thoughts cupping her and holding tight, the Kenning’s heat receding like floodwaters out into a cold and empty black.
Kaori knelt beside her, blade still clutched in one trembling fist.
“Yukiko, are you all right?”
She dragged herself to her feet, smudged blood across her mouth with the back of one hand. Stumbling out the door, she wrapped her arms around Buruu’s neck. Sinking to her knees again, him beside her, wrapping her beneath his clockwork wings. Salty warmth on her lips, clogging her nose. Echoes bouncing inside her skull. The sparks of every animal out in the forest, out there in the dark, flaring brighter than she could ever remember.
“Good-bye, Hiro…”
She could feel everything.
“Gods, what’s happening to me?”
3
THE FIRST AND ONLY REASON
Yukiko’s dreams were of burning ironclads.
A golden throne and a boy with sea-green eyes.
Smiling at her.
Her sunlit hours were all motion. Visiting Kin in the infirmary. Speaking with the Kagé council about the ironclad attack. Talks of Hiro’s wedding. Concern over the flurry of small, warm bodies that had dashed themselves to dying against her bedroom walls. Halfhearted assurances that all was well. Disbelieving stares.
The ache in her skull swelled by the day—the thoughts of the surrounding wildlife encroaching just a fraction further, a thousand splinters digging ever deeper. But every night, she made it stop, reaching for the saké bottle to dull it all. A blunt force trauma knocking her wonderfully senseless, burning mouthfuls submerging her beneath a merciful, velvet silence.
She would sit with the bottle in her hands, fighting the urge to hurl it into the wall. To watch it shatter into a thousand pieces. To ruin something beyond repair.
To unmake.
Buruu’s concern was a constant white noise inside her skull. But if he thought less of her as he watched her retching up the dregs every morning, she felt no trace of it inside his mind.
Hauling herself from her bed in the splintering light of the third day, the ache flared inside her head; an old friend waiting in the wings with open arms. Liquor dregs sloshed inside her empty innards, hangover fingers buried in her skull all the way to the knuckles. She sat at breakfast with the rest of the village, avoiding Daichi’s watchful stare, swallowing her puke like medicine. It was almost midday before she made it to the infirmary, asked Old Mari if Kin would be well enough to take a walk with her.
She’d been putting this off for far too long.
The graveyard stood in a quiet clearing, guarded by ancient sugi trees. The sparks of a hundred tiny lives burned around her, the heat and pulse of Buruu beside her so overpowering it was almost nauseating. The forest was a smudge against sleep-gummed lashes, eyelids made of sand, pickaxes in her throbbing skull. She remembered the saké blurring the pain as Daichi burned away her tattoo, sensation fading to oblivion. She remembered her father, drowning his own gift in smoke and drink.
Don’t want it.
A sigh.
Just need it.
She looked down at the marker at her feet, at his name carved deep into the gravestone.
I think I understand you more and more each day, Father.
Her mouth was dry, tongue like ash. The Kenning burned in her mind alongside the memory of dozens of small, broken bodies scattered around the tree cradling her room. Wind moaned through the fading green, the Thunder God Raijin pounding on his drums above the gentle rain. Incense smoldered in the shrine, thin smoke weaving toward the heavens.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Kin stood a few paces away, knife-bright eyes locked on hers, rain beading upon his lashes. He was clad in gray, his feet and arm wrapped in fresh bandages, fading burn scars etched on his throat and chin. She saw his flight from Kigen had taken its toll, turned him lean and hard, tanned his sun-starved skin. His once-shaved skull was now covered in dark stubble, short sleeves showing taut muscle and the strange metallic bayonet fixtures studding his flesh. Yukiko remembered unplugging him from his atmos-suit after he’d been burned, pulling black, snaking cables from his flesh, the plugs gaping like hungry mouths. All that remained of his suit now was a brass belt around his waist, stuffed with an assortment of tools and instrumentation—the only component he’d salvaged from the metal skin he’d worn for most of his life.
“No,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Your father loved you, Yukiko. And he knew you loved him before the end.”
“That won’t bring him back.”
“No. It won’t. But you can make his death mean something anyway.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it, Kin. Please.”
He chewed his lip, eyes to the ground. “You seem … different somehow. Changed. What you did to those ships the other day…”
“I don’t really want to talk about that either.”
She knelt near the grave, dug her fingers into the soil. Dark earth on pale skin, rain rolling down her cheeks instead of the tears she should be crying. She could see Yoritomo’s face, eyes narrowed above the iron-thrower, hear his voice ringing inside her head.
“All you possess, I allow you to have. All you are, I allow you to be.”
Her hands curled into fists, eyes closed tight. She stood, face to the sky, cool rain on her cheeks washing none of it away. Buruu stretched his wings, shook himself like a soggy hound. His thoughts were so loud they made her wince.
YOU MUST LET HIM GO, YUKIKO.
I can’t just forget what’s happened, Buruu.
I FEEL THE RAGE IN YOU. GROWING BY THE DAY. IF YOU ALLOW IT, IT WILL BURN EVERYTHING AROUND YOU TO ASHES. EVERYTHING.
Am I supposed to be weeping? Crying for my da like some frightened little girl?
IT TAKES COURAGE TO SAY GOOD-BYE. TO STARE AT A THING LOST AND KNOW IT IS GONE FOREVER. SOME TEARS ARE IRON-FORGED.
She stared at the grave, sighed like the wind through the trees.
“Hiro is alive.”
“What?” Kin whispered, eyes growing wide.
“The Guild is backing him as Daimyo of the Tora clan. He’s going to marry Lady Aisha. Claim the Shōgun’s throne. We have to stop him.”
“Hiro.” Kin swallowed. “As Shōgun…”
She pictured a boy with sea-green eyes, remembered the way her stomach tumbled upward into the clouds when he smiled. All the sweet nothings he’d whispered in the long hours between dusk and dawn, touching her in ways and places no one ever had before. Holding her close, arm wrapped around her naked shoulders. That same arm they’d torn from his body, those beautiful eyes staring up at her in disbelief as she lay him on the stone, her tantō in his ribs.
If only she’d twisted it.
If only she’d torn it loose and opened up the smooth skin at his throat …
“Do you still love him?”
Yukiko blinked in surprise. Kin was watching her closely, eyes clothed in shadow. His fingers strayed to his wrist, fidgeted with the metal input stud in his flesh. She was reminded of the day they first met on the Thunder Child. The night they’d stood on the prow and breathed in the storm, let the rain wash their fear away.
“Hiro?”
“Hiro.”
“Of course I don’t, Kin. I thought I
killed that bastard. I wish I had.”
“I…” His fingers twitched, and he stuffed his hands into his tool belt, scuffing dead leaves beneath his feet. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
Yukiko heaved an impatient sigh. The headache squeezed tight, the pulse of the lives around her was thunder in her ears. Soaking wet. Miserable. And he wants to play games?
“Kin, say what you mean, godsdammit.”
“I’m going to sound like an idiot. I’m no good at this.” He waved at the spirit stones around them. “And a graveyard probably isn’t the best place for this conversation.”
“Izanagi’s balls, what conversation?”
He sucked his lip, looked into her eyes. She could see the words welling up in his throat, a flood pressing at a crumbling levy, bursting over in a tumble.
“Traveling here after Yoritomo died … on a road that long, you have a lot of time to think about what matters to you. And I know everyone is looking to you now. This war isn’t over, and I understand that. I don’t know how any of this is supposed to work. I spent my whole life in the Guild. I don’t know what … happens between men and women…”
Yukiko raised an eyebrow.
“I mean, I know what happens happens,” Kin added hastily. “I mean, I know what goes where and that there’s supposed to be flowers, and poetry fits in somehow too, but…”
Yukiko pressed her lips together, trying to smother a smile that somehow felt traitorous and out of place. She felt a lightness in her chest, breathing just a tiny bit easier. The simplicity of it. The sweet and awkward stumbling of it. The beauty of it.
She remembered.
The boy ran his hand across his scalp, threw a pleading glance to the heavens.
“I told you I’d sound like an idiot…”
“No, you don’t.”
YES, HE DOES.
Hush.
THIS IS MY HELL, I SWEAR IT. WHEN I PASS INTO THE AFTERLIFE AND AM PUNISHED FOR MY SINS, THIS WILL BE MY TORMENT. SURROUNDED BY A SEA OF MOONING, ADOLESCENT MONKEY-BOYS. MUDDLING ABOUT IN PUDDLES OF THEIR OWN DRIBBLE.
Her smile emerged, bright in its victory.
Kin was looking into her eyes. A soft stare full of silent hope. A hope that had made him betray everything he was—his family, his Guild, his way of life. A hope that had bid him gift Buruu with mechanical wings, that had freed them both from their prisons. Without him, Buruu would still be Yoritomo’s slave. Without him, she’d probably be dead. What had it taken, for him to throw everything he was away? To cast aside the metal he’d worn his entire life, trek all the way here just to find her? Not just hope.
