by Jay Kristoff
The girl peered at him, one dark eye gleaming between disobedient locks of hair. Standing slowly, she padded across the room to tug the window open. A faintly toxic breeze drifted inside, the bustling city song beyond nearly drowned by the soundbox wail. The girl stood back, folded her arms, staring at the cat perched on the windowsill above. For his part, the big tom seemed too intent on his not-so-privates to notice.
“Go on!” the girl finally yelled. “Get!”
The cat unfolded himself from his knot, made something close to a huffing sound and dropped to the lower sill. After a languorous stretch, he spared Hana a dagger-sharp stare, and finally slipped into the daylight. The girl slunk back to her mattress, her tread soundless. Sinking down with crossed legs and a challenging stare, she continued braiding her hair.
“How long have you been with the Kagé?” he frowned.
“Two weeks.”
“What made you join?”
“The Stormdancer.”
“Stormdancer?”
The girl looked at him as if he were a simpleton.
“The girl who tamed the thunder tiger? Brought it back from the Iishi single-handed? You must have heard of her. She’s all over the Kagé broadcasts. Someone’s even written a kabuki play about her; I saw it outside a brothel in Ibitsu Street last week, before the bushi’ started cracking skulls.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of her,” Akihito nodded. “I’m still just getting used to the name, to be honest. I always called her Yukiko.”
Hana’s eye narrowed. “You know her?”
Akihito considered the girl staring at him. Defiance. Suspicion. She was so wretchedly thin; fingers almost skeletal, pale skin covered in grime. He focused on that single dark eye, almost too large in her emaciated face. He wanted to trust her, but couldn’t quite fathom why. Was it because she was somehow familiar? Female? Young? How old could she be, anyway? Seventeen? Eighteen?
Almost the same age as …
“I hunted with her father, Kitsune Masaru.”
“The Black Fox of Shima?” Hana’s voice was awed, and she leaned forward, braids forgotten. “People lay spirit tablets for him near the Burning Stones!”
The big man held up the wood he’d been carving. “Who do you think started putting them there?”
“My gods, you knew them?” Hana breathed. “Did you meet her thunder tiger?”
“Meet it?” Akihito’s chest puffed out a little. “I helped catch the bloody thing.”
“Oh my gods!” Hana was back on her feet, hands over her mouth. “So help me, if you’re talking out of your—”
“I helped catch it. On the sky-ship Thunder Child, neck-deep in the worst storm I’ve ever seen.” The big man’s eyes shone. “Ryu Yamagata knew how to fly a ship, for godsdamn certain. He was a good man.” The light in his eyes dwindled and died. “They were all good men.”
“What’s she like?” Hana’s eye was bright, her imagination afire. “The Stormdancer?”
“A clever girl.” Akihito nodded. “Strong. Hellsborn stubborn. But sugar-sweet. Truth be told, she’s a lot like you, Hana-chan.” He glanced up at the windowsill where the tomcat had been perched a few minutes before, scratched the whiskers on his chin.
“She’s an awful lot like you.”
11
DESOLATION’S EDGE
Yukiko had forgotten how beautiful the world could be.
Towering mountains beneath them, ancient and unchangeable. Making her feel like a brief and tiny thing; a spark escaping the rush of a twilight fire, speeding into the sky even as it burned away to nothing. Trees arrayed in gowns of bloody scarlet and shining gold, of bright rust and fading rose, like dancers awaiting the moment autumn’s music would falter. And then they would shed their finery in a flurry, sleep naked in winter’s arms, and wait for spring to wake them with warm and gentle kisses in all their softest places.
Yukiko rested her head against Buruu’s neck and watched it all grow smaller and smaller. She’d closed herself off from the Kenning, just she and the wind in her hair, the world diminishing beyond lenses of polarized glass.
Yofun lay strapped across her spine with a length of braided cord. She’d found the katana clapped and scraped against the tantō at the small of her back, threatening to ruin the lacquer on both. Deciding the knife and sword made an argumentative pair, she’d stuffed her tantō into the bottom of one of Buruu’s satchels, melancholy thoughts of her father with it.
The saké had worn off, the memory of Kin’s cold farewell a hollow ache inside her. She reached out to Buruu, eyebrows knitted together, opening herself up just a hair’s breadth. A burst of heat, blinding, pulses in the forest below flaring bright—lives she’d never have been able to feel at this distance just a month ago.
She clenched her teeth, tried to make the Kenning contract, like an iris as the sun crests the horizon. Trying to build a wall of herself, brick by brick. A bulwark of will to hold the fire at bay, something stronger than the insubstantial numbness granted by a gutful of liquor. Images of her childhood. Memories and moments—anything that would tether her, anchor her, shield her from the inferno waiting beyond. Her breath came shorter, headache cinching tight.
Can you hear me, brother?
YES.
His voice was tiny, as if he stood on a distant mountaintop and called across a valley of burning red.
Don’t hold back. Speak like you would normally.
I DO NOT WANT TO HURT YOU.
No, I need to control this. I need your help. Please, Buruu. Do as I ask.
VERY WELL.
She hissed in pain, wincing, slumping forward across his shoulders. Her grip faltered as his thoughts crashed inside her skull, smashing her wall to splinters, her whole body aching. Buruu whined, holding his wings steady so as not to throw her from his back. Blood dripped from her nose, bright and gleaming, smeared through his feathers and upon her cheek.
It’s all right … I’m all right …
She felt him pull himself back, whispering across the link binding them together.
SMALL STEPS FIRST, AGREED?
She wiped the blood from her nose, a slick of crimson on her knuckles. She sniffed hard and spat, salty, bright red.
All right, agreed. Small steps first.
GOOD.
The thunder tiger nodded.
EVEN STORMDANCERS MUST WALK BEFORE THEY FLY.
They ascended, clouds rolling back across a bloody gray sky. The sun was a harsh glint on the edges of her goggles, sharp enough to cut her eyes from her head. The forest pulse receded as they rose above it all, the island shrinking beneath them as the air grew thin and brittle, blood-red ocean stretching all the way to the horizon.
Looking far behind them, miles upon miles to the south, she could see the Iishi Mountains melting into low foothills. And beyond them? Blood lotus. Everywhere. The blooms had been plucked as summer died, red fields stripped to undergarments of miserable green. The weed with a hundred uses, or so the Guild claimed. Proof the gods existed. But squinting across endless fields rippling in the toxic wind, Yukiko only saw proof of her people’s greed.
Deadlands. Great, smoking tracts of earth, stripped of life by the poison in the lotus roots—an infection spreading across Shima’s flesh. From this altitude, they could see how bad it had become, how far the soil-death had spread. Countless miles of ashen earth, rent with fissures as if the island was bursting; some sepsis forcing its way up through a broken crust. Dark mist drifted snot-thick over the deadlands, never straying far from the desolation’s edge.
Yukiko found herself wondering if Kin was right. If there was anything they could do to save the land. Some way to undo all the damage they’d wrought …
Buruu lurked behind her eyes, a gentle, cotton-pawed prowl. Feline grace, even in his thoughts, trying his best not to awaken the pain he could feel coiled and ready. She nodded to the southern fields, blurred by smog and distance.
That’s Kitsune country. My homeland. The valley I grew up in was f
illed with bamboo once. Bamboo and butterflies. And now it’s nothing but that accursed weed.
WHERE WILL YOUR PEOPLE GO, WHEN ALL THEIR SOIL IS ASHES?
Over the oceans. To steal others’ lands with the power chi gives them.
AND WHEN THOSE LANDS ARE ASH? WHEN EVERYTHING BENEATH THE RED SUN IS GONE TO DUST?
Unless we put an end to it? They’ll go to the hells, Buruu. And all of us with them. That’s why we must be swift. Hiro cannot marry Aisha. The dynasty cannot be reforged.
MY KIND WERE RIGHT TO LEAVE THIS PLACE. TO GO WHERE YOUR KIND CANNOT FOLLOW.
North?
He nodded.
EVERSTORM.
Everstorm?
THAT IS WHAT WE CALL IT.
What’s it like?
BEAUTIFUL. I WISH YOU COULD SEE IT.
Will you take me there one day? When all this is done?
She felt sadness in him then, a hint of something usually buried in the darkest corners of his mind. A glimpse was all she saw with the Kenning’s new strength, the shadow of something vast, some leviathan moving beneath black waters. And just as quickly, it was gone.
NO.
He sighed.
NO, I WILL NOT.
* * *
North across the Iishi wilderness, the sawtoothed peak and drop of the mountain range, turning to slow gold in autumn’s grip. They cleared the coast of Seidai Island, and she could see Shabishii in the distance; sheer granite cliffs rising like broken teeth from the bloody sea. The storm grew in ferocity, thunder rocking her bones. They slept as night fell, Yukiko’s arms bound around Buruu’s neck, the thunder tiger falling into a trancelike state; the not-quite unconsciousness of migratory birds who spend months with nothing but the sea for company.
By morning they were floating high above the water, the isle of Shabishii looming out of the mist. The ocean wandered away below them, getting lost before it reached the horizon and melting into the sky. She had never seen the sea before, save the black scum of Kigen Bay. It was nothing like the old paintings; not the color of deep forest or Kitsune jade or even the eyes of a samurai boy whose smile had filled her stomach with butterflies. It was red as blood, a seething swell reflecting the crimson sky above. And before it filled her heart with aching and she turned from the thought, she realized how childish it had been; to love a boy she didn’t even know. To name the shade of his eyes after a color she’d never seen. And how long ago it all seemed.
She thought of Kin. Eyes closed. Sighing. Running her fingers across her lips, the memory of his kiss lingering like the—
YOU ARE DOING IT AGAIN.
What?
I AM GOING TO START COMPOSING BAD POETRY SOON.
Gods, I’m sorry …
A GOOD THING THERE ARE NO MONKEYS AROUND.
They’d begun to find a balance between them: Buruu holding himself back enough that his thoughts didn’t make her headaches worse, but loud enough to constantly test her control. She still worked at the wall inside her head, pushing the pieces of herself into place like masonry onto budding ramparts, a dam to bear the brunt of the Kenning’s noise and heat. But her grip would often falter, bricks cracking and splintering, his words squealing inside her head like a feedback loop, her nose spitting blood. She felt the Kenning growing stronger; a tide swelling behind her eyes, dashing itself over and over against her slender defenses. And still, she had no answers why.
Circling for endless hours around Shabishii island, she finally spied the place she might find them. Glowering upon a natural plateau, rooted so well in the stone it was difficult to tell where the brickwork began and nature’s work ended. A skulking cluster of ancient buildings, sheltered against a sheer cliff face, outer walls dropping into the raging sea. Broad curving roofs, like decapitated pyramids stacked atop one another. Dark brick and black tiles.
The Monastery of the Painted Brethren.
No light gleaming in thin windows, no movement on high walls. The buildings were intact but overgrown, long vines working their way decade by dusty decade through the brick. The storm swelled overhead, a splinter of lightning stabbing the horizon, thrust blade-first into that blood-red sea as thunder broke the sky.
Can you see anyone?
NOT A SOUL.
Closer?
They circled. Lower. Nearer. She could see tangled fields in a vast quadrangle, what might have been food crops now trying to run wild in the vaguely poisoned air. A rope and pulley hung forlorn over a natural harbor, gnawed and slapped by the swell.
How the hells did they build this place?
They landed in the overgrown courtyard, cobbles choked by weeds, rain flooding in cackling waterfalls over the battlements. There was no sign of struggle—the outer doors were still whole and barred, the stonework unmarred by siege or fire. But slipping lightly off Buruu’s back and surveying the surroundings, Yukiko’s heart sank. Whoever lived here had done so long ago. Nobody builds a fortress in climes so inhospitable and then lets nature reclaim it.
Buruu surveyed the surrounds with unblinking, molten eyes, head tilted, puzzlement in his gaze. With a faint disquiet, Yukiko realized the world inside her head was almost completely silent. No blazing tangle of human thoughts, not even the burning sparks of birds or beasts. A few lonely gulls wailed at the very edges of her senses, but that was all. The monastery, the scrub-brushed cliffs, the entire vista felt almost entirely bereft of life. The storm was the only sound, the shushing of constant rain, a whip-crack of thunder setting Buruu to purring, thin fingers of lightning racing each other across the clouds.
I SMELL NOTHING.
Yukiko winced, flinching as if Buruu’s thoughts were a solid hook to her temple. Another inexplicable surge of power, always when she was least prepared, her wall dashed to pieces. Breathing ragged, body sore, suddenly and terribly tired of this; her closest friend in the world being the source of almost constant pain. She fought the welling frustration, knowing it would only make things worse, send the Kenning spiraling out of control. Toward what? Another earthquake? Her skull splitting open, brain flopping about at her feet like some drowning fish?
She pressed her hands to her brow, squeezed her eyes shut.
You’re so loud, brother …
I AM SORRY. I HATE TO HURT YOU.
Anger flared then, despite her best efforts to press it back. The Kenning had always simply been, never changing, never failing; taken for granted as thoughtlessly as talking or breathing. It was as if her legs had suddenly betrayed her, sending her skipping when she wanted to stand still, tripping her onto her face when she wanted to run. For the first time in her life, she was afraid of it. Truly afraid of who and what she was.
She looked up to the monastery’s silhouette, charcoal-etched against the lightning sky.
I hope we find our answers here, Buruu.
I DO NOT LIKE THIS, SISTER.
We’ve flown all this way. It seems foolish to stop at the threshold.
I THINK FOOLISH MAY BE BECOMING OUR SPECIALTY.
Thunder crashed again, rain falling like tiny hammers. Though part of her (part of him?) longed to be up in the clouds, her human side was shivering cold, drenched to her bones, the ever-increasing downpour doing little to ease the nagging ache at the base of her skull. She felt exhausted, sore from the flight, thirsty and miserable. A few moments out of the elements would be a welcome change, if nothing else.
We’ll find no answers out here in the rain, brother. And every moment we waste is another moment Hiro’s wedding draws closer.
A low growl, tail lashing. His volume receding slowly, not unlike an ebbing tide.
AS YOU WISH.
Tall double doors barred entry to the main building, heavy oak shod with iron. She lifted the knocker, rust flaking beneath her grip, pounding it against the wood. Waiting interminable minutes, pounding again, dragging rain-soaked hair from her eyes. She blinked up at empty windows, lightning reflected on cloudy, dust-dark glass.
Nobody home.
STAND ASIDE.
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Yukiko backed well away, Buruu lowering his head, talons scarring the flagstones. She could feel it gathering around him—a whisper-rush of static charge, the hair on her arms standing tall, ozone thickening in the air. The thunder tiger spread his wings, pistons on his false-pinions creaking, shuddering, tiny wisps of lightning trickling across his sheared feathertips. The world fell still as he reared up on his hind legs, Yukiko clenching her teeth, covering her ears as Buruu clapped his wings together, giving birth to a deafening peal of Raijin Song.
It was written in the old legends that arashitora were children of the Thunder God, Raijin. That to mark them as his own, their father had gifted their wings some measure of his power. Yukiko had thought the tales a myth until she’d seen it with her own eyes—the night Buruu had almost blasted the Thunder Child from the skies.
A thunderous boom rocked the courtyard; the crack of a thousand bullwhips splitting the air in two, the shivering walls bleeding mortar. Flagstones burst skyward as if black powder were being ignited underground, rainwater vaporizing as the shock wave collided with the ancient wooden doors and sheared them to splinters. Iron buckled, rivets popped, hinges squealed as the doors burst inward. One was blasted clear of its moorings, the other hanging from a single stubborn hinge, swinging like a broken jaw.
Dust in the hallway beyond danced briefly in the calamity, echoes dying with reluctance.
Yukiko brought her hands away from her ears, a smile curling her lips. She put her arms around Buruu’s neck, stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. His purr set the broken stones at their feet trembling anew.
You are a little magnificent, you know.
ONLY A LITTLE?
Gasping, hand to her brow as his thoughts bounced like boulders around her skull. Slamming the door on the Kenning again; a recalcitrant child marched off to its bedroom to ponder its wrongdoings. Buruu whined, stepped away, tail tucked. Yukiko could sense he wanted to apologize, but without the bridge of thought between them, he had no way to do so. She wondered what it must feel like for him when she closed off her power completely—to be locked in the cold outside her head, just as alone as she was. Reaching out, she ran her hand down his throat, curling her fingers through whisper-soft feathers, giving him the only comfort she could. As she kissed him again, she saw she’d left a smear of scarlet on his cheek.
