by Jay Kristoff
“Then it is my right to choose to remain silent, is it not?”
“But why? You’re free now. What’s to be afraid of?”
Ayane glanced over her shoulder, spider limbs rippling.
“The girl all Guildsmen fear.”
* * *
Kaori’s glare was the color of water on polished steel, sharp at the edges.
“I cannot believe you brought it here.”
Four figures knelt in a semicircle around the fire pit in Daichi’s dwelling, lit by crackling flame. The assembled faces belonged to the Kagé military council; hard eyes, cool expressions, sword-grip calluses on every hand. There was Kaori, of course, fringe draped over her face, clad in simple clothing of dappled green. Maro and Ryusaki sat together—broad, flat faces, nut-brown skin, deeply lidded eyes that seemed almost closed even when they were fully awake. Ryusaki had a shaved head, a long plaited moustache, his occasional smiles revealing gums bereft of most of his front teeth. Maro’s hair was bound in warrior’s braids and he was missing an eye, the left lens on the goggles slung about his neck painted black. The brothers were former samurai who’d served under Daichi’s command, following him from Kigen city into the wilderness. Maro usually led the arson crew attacks on the southern lotus fields, and seemed perpetually wreathed in smoke. Ryusaki was a swordmaster, Michi’s sensei, and the man had been teaching Yukiko some bladework in the few moments she found spare.
Daichi himself knelt in the center, a cup of tea before him, fists on his knees. He ran his hand down through his long faded moustache, eyes the same blue-gray as his daughter’s. His old-fashioned katana rested in an alcove at his back, sibling to the wakizashi Kaori carried—a scabbard of black enamel, embossed with golden cranes.
Yukiko put her palm to her brow, headache digging its boots into the back of her eyeballs. Sickness swelled in her stomach, the floor of Daichi’s house rolling like the deck of a sky-ship in a storm. She’d tried to close off the Kenning, but could still feel Buruu waiting on the landing outside—a pale inferno burning in her mind’s eye.
“It was either bring her with us or kill her, Kaori.”
“So kill her,” the woman snapped. “Where is the issue?”
“I don’t kill helpless girls with their hands bound at their sides.”
“She’s not a girl,” Kaori growled. “She’s a godsdamn Guildsman.”
Peppermint tea. Burning cedar. Old leather, sword oil and dry flowers. A perfume filling Daichi’s sitting room, filling her lungs and head, too much input, sharp and pointed inside her skull. She fancied she could still smell charring meat, hear the sizzle of her skin as Daichi pressed the burning blade to her tattoo.
Yukiko stood and walked to the window. The laughing fire spread awful warmth into every corner, snapping blackened logs between its fingers and breathing smoke up through a beaten brass flue. She pushed the shutters aside, gulping down lungfuls of fresh, rain-sweet air.
Daichi watched Yukiko carefully, faint concern in his eyes.
“Nobody in this room has more reason to hate the Guild than me, Kaori.” Yukiko turned from the window, stared at the council. “But I’m not certain I want to be a butcher.”
“The crews of those ironclads you destroyed might say otherwise,” Kaori said.
“Oh, you fuc—”
“We all do what needs to be done, Stormdancer,” Kaori snapped. “You included. We will all turn the waters red when we bathe once this is finished. The lotus must burn.”
Yukiko looked to Daichi, waiting for him to weigh in, but the old man was staring at his hands, uncharacteristically silent.
“I wanted to check with you all before I did anything final.” Yukiko wiped sweat-soaked palms on her hakama legs. “It’s safe to bring her here. Kin assured me there’s no way for the Guild to track her out of her skin.”
“And you trust him?” Maro scoffed.
“Of course I trust him.” Yukiko’s voice was cold as winter morning. “He saved my life. I trust him more than I trust you.”
“Be it made of scales or brass, a snake who sheds his skin is still a snake.”
“There is no steel in that boy,” Kaori said. “No fire. Only treachery.”
“How can you say that?” Yukiko felt heat in her cheeks, memories of his lips rushing beneath her skin. “He gave up everything to be here with us.”
“He gave up everything to be here with you,” Kaori said. “He cares nothing for the revolution. If you left us, he’d be gone tomorrow. You are the reason he is here, Stormdancer. Open your eyes.”
Yukiko drew breath to reply, but found no words.
“You’re the reason. The first and only reason.”
“This is not about the boy.” Sensei Ryusaki’s low growl cut through the tension. “This is about the Guildsman, and what we do with it.”
“Kill it,” Maro said flatly. “Their kind are poison. The lotus must burn.”
“I agree,” Yukiko nodded. “We’d be fools to trust it.”
She looked amongst the council, noted the surprise on their faces.
“Look, I know that might make me a bitch, but at least I’m not a stupid bitch.”
“What if this girl speaks the truth?” Daichi’s voice cut the air like a knife. “What if there are more like her in the Guild?”
“Impossible,” Kaori said.
“Arashitora were impossible too, a few months ago.” Daichi’s voice was rough as bluestone gravel. “Now look at the magnificence outside this room.”
The council looked out through the open doorway at the thunder tiger sprawled upon the deck. Buruu was stretched out in the rain, idly tearing up talonfuls of planking. His yawn sent tremors through the floor.
TELL THEM IT IS RUDE TO STARE. EVEN AT MAGNIFICENCE.
Hush! Gods, you’re too loud. Go back to sleep.
She felt the thunder tiger trying to hold himself back, aware of her pain, allowing only a sliver of himself to creep across the bond between them. And though his thoughts were tinged with bright, crackling feedback, at least the volume receded to a tolerable level.
HOW CAN I SLEEP WITH YOUR MIND SO FULL OF NOISE?
I suppose you want to venture an opinion on all this?
YES. BUT I AM STILL BASKING IN THE “MAGNIFICENT” COMMENT. GIVE ME A MOMENT …
“Father, you cannot mean to trust it.” Kaori placed her hand on the old man’s knee.
Daichi sipped his tea, cleared his throat. “All I say is consider if she speaks truth. Think of what it would gain us to start a rebellion within the Guild. Think of the damage we could do. This girl could be the secret to bringing down the chi-mongers once and for all.”
Yukiko met the old man’s gaze. “I don’t think we can trust her.”
“Can we not, Stormdancer? Yet in the same breath, you would tell us to treat your Kin as one of our own?”
AH, THERE IT IS.
Yukiko winced, turned her head aside as if from an incoming slap.
Too loud!
Buruu pulled himself back again, curling inward until only a splinter remained.
I AM SORRY. I NEED NOT SHARE MY THOUGHTS WHEN THIS OLD MAN SPEAKS THEM FOR ME. I WILL REMAIN MAGNIFICENTLY SILENT.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that.” Yukiko folded her arms, ignoring Buruu’s smug, self-satisfied warmth.
“Stormdancer?” Daichi’s eyebrows were raised over the rim of his teacup.
“It’s not my name.”
“It is what you are.”
“The way you all look at me … it’s like you expect to see lightning coming out of my hands, or flowers blooming wherever I walk. I haven’t done anything yet, and you act like I’ve saved the world.”
“You have given people hope,” Daichi said. “That is a precious thing.”
“It’s a dangerous thing.”
“No more dangerous than executing this girl for the sin of what she used to be.”
“Gods, Daichi, when we first came here you were willing to murder Kin on exactly the same suspicion. Yo
u were willing to kill me over a tattoo.”
“Perhaps I have learned a few lessons since then. From a new sensei.” Daichi smiled. “And you say you haven’t done anything yet.”
Yukiko stared at the old man, mute and still. It wasn’t so long ago she was standing over him in this very room, knife at his throat while he demanded she kill him. But it seemed every time Daichi spoke, some new facet of him came to light. His hatred of the Guild and government was tempered by steady hands and a fierce, calculating mind. She could see why the Kagé followed him. Why they were willing to risk their lives for his vision.
The truth was, he was a natural leader—the leader she feared she’d never be. All she had was the desire for revenge. The memory of her father’s death, his blood warm and sticky on her hands, bubbling on his lips as he died. The thought of it threatened to overwhelm her, pulsing in time with the headache splitting the bone at the base of her skull.
“It seems somehow out of balance, does it not?” Daichi coughed hard, cleared his throat as he looked around the council. “To spare the boy and end the girl?”
“We can always kill them both,” Kaori said.
Yukiko rubbed her pounding temples, closed her bloodshot eyes. She could feel the forest all around her, the myriad lives just beyond the window, the heat and chatter of their minds rising in her own. A barrage. A bedlam. Concussive and sickening, pouring over her like scalding water. And as she closed her eyes, tried to stifle the fires burning in her head, to her amazement, her absolute horror, she realized she could sense other pulses within the Kenning. Something beyond the fluttering thoughts of birds, the faint and furtive impulses of small warm things, the boiling heartbeat of the thunder tiger just outside the door.
She could feel the Kagé too.
Blurry and indistinct, all heat and light, alien shapes and impossible tangles of emotion. Everywhere. Like the answer to a perception puzzle that, once seen, can never be missed. She remembered reaching out to Yoritomo’s mind in the Market Square, trying to hold on to him like a handful of sand. But now, effortlessly, she could feel every person in the village. A low-level hum stacked upon itself, one person at a time, until the entire world was shapeless noise. She bent double, blinking hard, Buruu rising to his feet and whining.
SISTER?
Daichi took another sip of tea, his voice a dry whisper.
“Are you well, Stormdancer?”
She smoothed the hair from her brow, the sensation of her fingertips like sledgehammers across her skin. She tried to close herself off, to force the noise and heat away, curling up inside herself and closing down the Kenning completely.
Gods, what’s wrong with me?
“Yukiko,” Daichi said. “Are you well?”
She took a deep breath, exhaled slow. The world had fallen quiet, and yet she could still feel it, just outside her skull. The tide of it rushing back out to sea before its next surge, a tsunami rising to blot out the sun. She in its shadow, standing an insect high.
“I have a headache, Daichi-sama.”
“Perhaps you should rest?” Kaori asked.
“How can I rest?” She blinked at the older woman, out of breath as if she’d been sprinting. “The Lotus Guild is trying to reforge Kazumitsu’s Dynasty and you’re talking about killing Kin? We should be talking about Hiro. The wedding. What are we doing to stop it?”
“The Kuro Street cell are already at work,” Kaori said. “We have an operative inside the palace walls. The ceremony is weeks away. Calm yourself.”
“I am calm!”
“Yukiko…” Daichi said.
SISTER.
“No, godsdammit!” she shouted. “The whole nation was ready to rise a few days ago, and now you’re sitting on your hands while it all slips—”
“Yukiko!”
Daichi shouted this time, graveled voice like a slap on her skin. She forced herself to be still, caught her breath, felt Buruu’s concern flooding her receptors. The world pulsing, the thoughts of everyone in the room building against her crumbling little dam as the whole earth beneath her swayed.
“What?” she hissed.
“Your ears are bleeding,” Daichi said.
She reached up to her head, felt the flood of thick warmth down the sides of her neck, spattering on the floor. Black suns imploded in her vision, tiny singularities folding in upon themselves and drawing her with them. Buruu was at the doorway, his thoughts a storm in her skull, the crunch and crumble of thunder interspersed with white strobes of crackling lightning. She fought for breath, for space, for a moment’s silence inside her head.
The tide came rolling in.
The walls trembling, the floor beneath her rolling. She sank to her knees, clutching her temples, heard the clatter of the tiny ornaments on Daichi’s shelves, chess pieces tumbling and falling. People on their feet, shouting, their thoughts impossible to keep at bay, flooding into her and out of her nostrils in scarlet floods. A teacup smashing on the boards. Daichi’s sword falling from the wall. Cries of alarm from the villagers outside as the trees literally trembled in their roots, and in her head a tangle, a briar, thorned and tearing, all of their thoughts, their hopes, their fear (gods, their fear), everything they were and could have been and wanted to be filling her up and pulling her down to the dark beneath her feet.
YUKIKO!
Buruu, help me!
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
I can’t keep it out!
It rose up on black wings, like some forgotten beast beneath the bed in the days when blankets were armor and her father’s voice the only sword she needed to keep the dark at bay. But he was gone, gone to his pyre, gone to the great judge Enma-ō. She could see him now; the ashes of offerings daubed on his face, cadaverous skin hanging loose from his bones, black blood still leaking from the hole in his throat. Her hands on the wound, trying to stop the flow, but it was too much, too deep, too late. Heat and thoughts and screams and floods, and as it rose up to swallow her, she felt Buruu in the black, groping toward her, burning in her mind.
HOLD ON TO ME.
Buruu!
HOLD ON TO ME, SISTER.
A tracery of blood vessels pulsing across the backs of her eyelids, strobing light beyond.
Reaching for him, her rock, her anchor, all that held her still in that gnashing swell.
His wings about her, ozone and feathers and warmth, soft as pillows.
And into the dark, she fell.
8
NO ONE
No matter the shape of the shoreline, or the color of the horizon, there are three breeds of drunk to be found beneath the rising and setting of the sun.
There’s the jovial kind who takes to the bottle when he has cause to celebrate, who has a few too many at festival feasts and revels in the rush of blood to his cheeks. He slurs his songs and argues with his friends about the gaijin war or the last arena match, grinning to the eyeteeth all the while. And though he might swim deep in the bottle, he doesn’t drown, and when he looks at the bottom he can still see his own reflection and smile.
Then there’s the kind who drinks like it’s his calling. Hunched silent over his glass, charging headlong toward stupor as fast as lips and throat can take him. He takes no joy in the journey, nor solace in company upon the road, but he keens for his destination with an intensity that leaves shadows under his eyes. Oblivion. A sleep where the dreams are so far submerged beneath Forgetting’s warm embrace that their voices are a vibration rather than a sound, like a mother’s lullaby in the blurred days before words had shape or meaning.
And then, there was No One’s father.
Seven shades mean, the kind who saw the bottle as a doorway to the black inside. A solvent to peel the paint from his mask, the luster of bone and blood beneath. A mumbled excuse for what had happened the last time, and the unspoken promise why it would happen the next.
The bottle’s lips pressed against his own like a mistress, a balm discovered in empty days after he returned from the war overseas. A tranq
uilizer to silence the cries of the gaijin that still haunted his dreams, numb the pain of the parts he was missing. And though he was a gambler too, hopeless and helpless, the bottle was his first and truest love.
But he loved her too, in his own stumbling, ugly way. He called their mother “bitch,” her brother “bastard.” But his daughter? His dearest? His flower? Even at his worst, he still called her by name.
Hana.
Her earliest memories of her mother were of tears spilling from swollen eyes, irises of gleaming blue. Of slumped shoulders, trembling hands and broken fingers. Of screamed abuse. Open palms and bloody lips and spitting teeth. Long days without a crumb to eat. Brief periods of plenty, of laden tables and tiny toys (dolls for her, soldiers for her brother) that he would give them with his broad, broken-toothed smile, and hock to the pawnman a few weeks later.
Running in the gutters of Yama city with other orphans of the bottle or the smoke or the war, she and Yoshi, both harder than a Lotusman’s skin by the time she was six. Violence and grime and bloody knuckles, wrapped in the stink of chi and shit. Fistfights. Broken glass. Blacklung beggars rotting in drains, or coughing their last in the squeezeways where the children played and laughed and forgot, if only for a moment. But through it all, they had each other. At least she and Yoshi had each other.
Blood is blood.
And then Father bought the farm. Literally. A tiny crop of lotus near Kigen city, snatched on a triple-nine hand in some yakuza smoke house. War hero turned man of the land. And so they left Yama, caught an airship south to Kigen; the first and only time in her life she’d ever flown. The engines were a thrum in her bones, and the wind a shower of gentle kisses on her cheeks, and she stood at the prow and watched the world sailing away beneath them, wishing they would never, ever have to come down from the clouds.
Yoshi hated him. Hated him like poison. But even when the beatings became too numerous to count, when the bottle had stolen all he was and would ever be, she loved him. She loved him with all her heart.
She couldn’t help it.
He was her da.
* * *
She’d rolled out of bed before the sunset and dragged on her servant’s clothes, the taste of stale exhaust buttered on her tongue. Washing her face in their bucket of tepid water, she felt at her cheek, her eyebrow, the scar tissue smooth beneath her fingers. Her memory awash with the gleam of candlelight on broken glass. Spit and blood. She straightened the patch over her eye, smoothed her unruly bob down as best she could and prepared to inhale her night. A glance into Yoshi and Jurou’s bedroom showed both boys asleep, sprawled across grubby sheets, mercifully free of cat excrement.
