Stormdancer

by Jay Kristoff

  The boy blinked.

  “What is Raijin song, sama?”

  “Arashitora are the children of the Thunder God, Raijin, young sama.” A gentle smile. “It is the sound of their wings you hear when the clouds clash and the storms roll.”

  Saito took the pipe from Masaru’s hand, fished a small leather pouch from inside his uwagi and repacked the bowl with a fresh blob of resin. Yukiko looked at the smudges on the tips of the lotus-fiend’s gray fingers; the same blue-black hue that stained her father’s.

  Saito lit the pipe on the lantern’s flame, and the fire swelled in Masaru’s bloodshot eyes, setting them ablaze.

  “The battle was as fierce as any the world had seen. Thunder cracked the sky, and great waves crashed on the mainland’s shores, sweeping away entire villages as if they were twig and tinder. The people held their breath, for as great a warrior as Kitsune no Akira was, never had there been a foe as deadly as Boukyaku. His teeth were swords, and his roar, an earthquake.

  “But at last, the Stormdancer returned, his armor broken and his flesh torn by poisoned fangs, and the mighty thunder tiger Raikou carried the bleeding heart of Boukyaku in his claws. Kitsune no Akira returned to the Emperor’s feast, and presented the heart to the fisherman with a low bow. When asked by the Emperor what he required in thanks for his mighty deed, Kitsune no Akira told the entire feast that they should always remember the name of Takaiyama, so that the Dragon of Forgetting would remain forever defeated. Then he knelt in his appointed place at table, toasted the Emperor’s health, and fell dead of the dragon poison in his veins.”

  “All praise.” Benjiro covered his fist and bowed, then reached for the lotus pipe.

  “All praise,” Saito nodded, sucking down one more lungful before passing it over.

  The cabin boy blinked, looked at Yukiko. “Is all that true?”

  “It’s what they say.” Her eyes were still fixed on her father. “But who knows whether or not he really existed.”

  Masaru looked up, finally met her stare. “Of course he existed.”

  Yukiko kept speaking to the cabin boy, as if her father had not made a sound. “It could have been an earthquake that sucked Takaiyama below the waves. Men blaming dragons or gods for their own misfortune, as they often do, even when the fault lies at their own two feet.” She glanced at Masaru’s toes. “Kitsune no Akira could just be a parable. A warning for us to give honor to the dead by remembering their names.” She shrugged at the boy. “Who knows?”

  “I know.” Masaru squinted at her with bleary, bloodshot eyes. “I know.”

  Yukiko stared back at him. Slurred words and a soft stare, that stupefied, slack-jawed look slinking over his face and turning his skin to gray. An anesthetic, numbing the pain of well-deserved loss.

  A crutch for a weak and broken man.

  She licked her lips, stood slowly to her feet.

  “I’ll tell you what I know.” She looked back and forth between the cloudwalkers. “I know you shouldn’t be offering the pipe to a twelve-year-old boy. I know you shouldn’t mock him for being ignorant, while you sit there sucking that filth into your lungs.” She fixed her father in her stare. “And I know all lotus-fiends are liars.”

  She covered her fist, gave a small bow to the cabin boy.

  “Goodnight, young sama.”

  She turned her back and went in search of sleep.

  * * *

  The sun had barely raised its weary head before Yukiko awoke the next day. Her father was sprawled in his hammock, one foot dangling over the side, snoring like a shredderman’s buzzsaw beneath his kerchief. His clothes reeked of lotus, his fingers stained with sticky, blue-black resin. She made as much noise as she could while washing and dressing, but he stirred not an inch. Cursing under her breath, she stalked from the room.

  The deck was already alive with cloudwalkers, the rigging above crawled with at least a dozen men, double-checking knot and cable as they drew ever closer to the oncoming monsoon. Captain Yamagata stood at the helm, both hands on the broad, spoked wheel, shouting orders to his men and cursing up a storm. The Thunder Child had trekked deep into the territory of the Dragon zaibatsu, and a quick glance over the side revealed the Iishi Mountains looming like a dark, jagged stain on the far northern horizon. Soon they would be flying over Kitsune territory; a scarred and smoking landscape she hadn’t seen up-close in almost eight years.

  A thick tangle of hair blew across her face, and she tucked it back behind her ears, feeling too sullen to even tie it up. She sat on the chi barrels lashed at the Thunder Child’s bow and watched the red countryside blur and roll beneath her feet. The dawn wind was cool, but the sun’s heat was already growing fierce, and she pulled her goggles up over her eyes to guard them from the piercing glare. She could see the brown stain of a chi pipeline, stabbing westward across the lotus fields; a rusted artery running through diseased flesh. Following the shape to a distant cluster of mountains on the port side, she squinted at the tiny specks of sky-ships floating around a dark smudge of dirt and smog; the mountain bastion of First House. The Guild stronghold was a pentagonal hulk of yellowed stone, squatting high among black clouds on its impregnable perch.

  A short wooden practice sword clattered onto the deck between her feet, the blunt blade nicked and dented in a dozen places, hilt wrapped in worn, crisscrossed cord. She stared down at the bokken, then glanced over her shoulder at the person who’d thrown it. Kasumi stood behind her, another short bokken in her hands, long hair tied back in a thick braid.

  “Spar?” The woman’s voice was slightly muffled behind her kerchief.

  “No.” Yukiko turned her eyes back to the horizon. “Thank you.”

  “It’s been days since you practiced.”

  “Four days off in seven years.” Yukiko tried to keep the scowl from her voice. “I think I’ll live.”

  “I’ll go easy on you, if you’re feeling air-sick.”

  Yukiko felt her hackles rise at the smile in Kasumi’s voice. She glanced over her shoulder again. “You couldn’t goad a rabid wolf with talk that weak. You want to try harder?”

  “No, you’re right.” Kasumi flipped the bokken from one hand to the other. “I should probably just leave you up here to sulk like a six-year-old.”

  Yukiko turned to face her. “I’m not sulking.”

  “Of course you’re not.” Kasumi knelt and picked up the bokken she’d thrown, pointed at the floor between Yukiko’s feet. “Mind you don’t trip over your bottom lip when you decide to get off your backside.”

  Yukiko snatched the practice sword from the older woman’s hand.

  “Fine. Have it your way.”

  The foredeck was large enough for a decent scrap without getting in any of the sky folk’s way. Yukiko felt a few curious eyes on her as she stood and tied her hair back in a braid, knotting it at the end. Kasumi took up position on the starboard side, flourishing the bokken sword in her hand, a sweeping spiral over her head and around her hip that turned the dented wood into a whistling blur. Yukiko walked to the port side, flipped the practice sword end over end. She took up her stance, stared at the older woman.

  “You shouldn’t be so hard on him,” Kasumi said.

  Yukiko dashed across the deck, swung the bokken right at Kasumi’s throat. The older woman fell back, deflecting the blow with ease. Yukiko pressed, aimed three quick stabs at face, chest, gut, spinning down into a sweeping arc toward Kasumi’s knees. The sharp crack of wood upon wood rang out across the ship, the thump of bare feet on the decking, the short, shapeless cries that punctuated each swing of Yukiko’s sword.

  She locked up Kasumi’s blade, forced the older woman back against the starboard railing. Hundreds of feet of empty air yawned between them and the swaying lotus fronds below.

  “Don’t lecture me,” Yukiko spat. “You’re not my godsdamned mother.”

  “So you keep reminding me.”

  Kasumi hooked her leg behind Yukiko’s and pushed her away. The girl tumbled backward and
up into a crouch, parrying the blow falling toward her head. Kasumi kicked her hard in the chest and sent her rolling further across the deck, breath spilling from her lips in a spray of spittle. Yukiko barely flipped up onto her feet in time to ward off the next rain of blows: two diagonal slashes at her chest and a flurry of stabs at her face. She retreated back across the foredeck, trying to regain balance.

  “Don’t defend him,” Yukiko hissed. “You know what he’s like. Sucking down that godsdamned weed every day of his life. Drinking himself blind. Maybe you should be on his back instead of riding mine every chance you get.”

  “I do it because I care about you.” Kasumi parried a clumsy blow, cracked Yukiko across her left shin. “And I see what you do to him.”

  Yukiko lashed out with her foot, leaped up and over the chi barrels to gain some breathing room, leveling the bokken at Kasumi’s head. She was panting, strands of black hair plastered to the film of sweat on her skin.

  “My father gets everything he deserves.”

  “He loves you, Yukiko.”

  “He loves his drink.” She clawed the hair from the corners of her mouth. “He loves that godsdamned pipe. More than he loves me. And more than he loves you.”

  Kasumi stopped short, chest heaving. The sword wavered in her hand.

  “Believe it, Kasumi.” Yukiko pulled down her goggles so the older woman could see her eyes. “Believe it if you believe nothing else.”

  She tossed the bokken down onto the deck. It rolled across the polished boards, came to rest at Kasumi’s feet, marking the end of the sparring session. Yukiko wiped the sweat from her brow on the sleeve of her uwagi, heart pounding, mouth dry as dust.

  Kasumi’s voice was soft, almost a whisper. “Maybe you don’t know everything, Yukiko.”

  “Maybe not.”

  She shouldered past the older woman as she walked away.

  “But I know enough.”

  10

  ALIVE AND BREATHING

  The rain started at the end of the sixth day, vast black curtains swaying across their path and hissing on the deck. The wood became slippery, and the stink of burned chi layered over melting varnish saw Yukiko’s nausea return with a vengeance. Huddled in an oilskin among the barrels, she prayed the journey would end, sucking down gulps of fresh air and dreading the monsoon ahead.

  Yamagata emerged from his cabin wearing a thick oilskin to protect him from the black rain. Masaru stood on the port side, leaning out into the abyss and staring at the clouds fuming on the horizon. The Child plowed through the toxic air, heading toward the tempest, the first foothills of the Iishi sailing away below them. Through the downpour, they could see the glow of Yama city flickering like a ghostlight in an ocean of growing gloom.

  Akihito and Kasumi gathered at the railing beside Masaru, all clad in thick ponchos of protective rubber, the big man keeping one massive paw wrapped around the bars of the cage for balance. Yukiko drifted down from her nest at the prow to listen to their hushed voices.

  “We’re heading into the storm?” Akihito ran one hand over his braids.

  “Where else do you think we’re going to find a thunder tiger?” Masaru scowled.

  “The sky folk are uneasy,” Kasumi kept her voice low. “Being so near to the Iishi is bad enough. They say that sailing this close to the entrance of Yomi will tempt the Judges of the Hells, not to mention angering the Dark Mother. They whisper Yamagata is insane to lead them into the clutches of the Thunder God. They blame us, Masaru-sama. They say we’re mad.”

  “They’re right.” Akihito shook his head. “Risking the whole damn ship and everyone aboard chasing a beast that doesn’t even exist. We don’t even know where to start looking.” He turned to his friend. “We should go to Yama, Masaru. Abandon this fool’s quest and the insane bastard who commands—”

  Masaru spun, quick as a viper, wrapping his fist in the collar of the big man’s uwagi.

  “We are the Shōgun’s men,” he hissed, teeth bared. “Sworn to his service, our lives pledged to his house. Would you dishonor that vow and yourself for fear of a little lightning?”

  Akihito slapped Masaru’s hand away. “I might not rate a mention in the tavern songs, but I stood beside you when you slew the last nagaraja, brother. You think I’m afraid?” He puffed out his chest, long scars cutting across his flesh. “I know in truth what kind of man Shōgun Kaneda was. I know what kind of son he raised. This is a madman’s errand. We risk all for nothing! This ship. These men. Your daughter…”

  “And what do you think we risk if we run?”

  Masaru’s face was inches from Akihito’s, eyes flashing.

  “Masaru-sama, Akihito, peace.” Kasumi shouldered between them, one hand on each man. “You are brothers in blood. Your anger dishonors you both.”

  The men stared at each other, eyes as narrow as knife-edges, wind shrieking across the gap between them. Akihito was the first to relent, turning with a growl and stalking away. Masaru watched him go, fists unclenching, drawing the back of his hand across his mouth.

  “Whether we find this thing or not means nothing.” His voice was flat, cold. “We are servants. Our Lord commands and we obey. That’s all there is.”

  “As you say,” Kasumi nodded, avoiding his stare.

  She turned and began inspecting gear she’d checked a dozen times already. Masaru lifted his hand, fingers hovering a breath away from her skin. Looking up, he finally noticed his daughter’s presence.

  Bloodshot eyes stared across the gulf between now and the days when she was a little girl, small enough to ride on his shoulders through forests of tall bamboo. She and her brother, little fingers wrapped in their father’s fists, laughing bright and clear as they danced in the dappled light.

  Too long ago—the memory faded and blurred like an old lithograph, colors muted over time until all that was left was an impression; a half-image on yellowed, curling paper.

  He turned and walked away without a word.

  * * *

  Dirty gray snow lay in a blanket on the ground, crunching beneath their hessian-wrapped feet and crouching in thick drifts across bare branches. Ywukiko and Satoru darted through the bamboo, Buruu barking with joy, sending the few winter larks that remained in the valley spiraling up into the falling snowflakes.

  Their father had been home for a few days, gifting them both with small compasses before he disappeared again. Tiny wheels whirled soundlessly beneath the glass, tracking the path of the hidden sun overhead. They would run into the wilds, straying further each day, finding their way back unerringly before dusk. Then they would sit by the fire, Buruu lying across their feet, listening to their mother sing and dreaming of their father’s return.

  Happy.

  Buruu would wag his tail at them, fire reflected in his eyes, tongue lolling.

  Love you both.

  They were on the northern ridge that day, high above the bamboo valley, looking down on the frozen stream, the tiny waterfall of icicles spilling over snow-capped rock. Black, naked trees stood tall on a blanket of bleached gray, sleeping in the chill and dreaming of the beauty that would arrive with spring. The children called out their names and heard the mountain kami call them back, fading away into the distance like the last notes of their mother’s songs.

  The wolf was hungry, lean, ribs showing through its coat, legs like sticks. A rogue descending from the mountains with a growling belly and a jagged mind alight with their scent. Buruu caught the smell of it on the breeze, hackles rising, ears flat against his head as he growled. Satoru reached out and touched its mind, feeling only bloodlust, terrible and complete, pounding with a rhythm like a pulse. The wolf circled to the left and the children began to back away, urging Buruu to be calm. Satoru leaned down to grasp a small club of wet wood.

  It moved in a blur, savage, sleek, hunger propelling it at Yukiko’s throat. She held out her hand and screamed, pushing it away with the Kenning as Buruu launched himself like an arrow. The wolf and the dog fell on each other, all tee
th and claws and awful screaming sounds. Buruu fought bravely, but his bones were old and the wolf was fierce, driven by desperate hunger to spend its last strength in this final, bloody gambit. She felt Buruu’s pain as the wolf’s jaws closed around his throat, tearing away crimson mouthfuls, spattering on the bed of gray snow in long bright ribbons.

  She screamed in anger, in hatred, pushing her mind into the wolf’s, feeling for its life, the source of its spark. She felt Satoru in there beside her, his rage fiercer than her own, and together they pressed down on the heat, snuffing it out like a candle, smothering it with their rage. Blood spilled from their noses as the pressure flooded their brains, warm and salty on their lips. They wrapped their hands together and strangled until nothing remained, darkness fading away into a whimper as the wolf folded down inside itself and ended upon the frost.

  They sat beside poor old Buruu, lay on his wet, heaving flanks as the ashen snow turned red around him. Tears rolled down their cheeks as they felt him slipping. Not afraid, but sad. Sad to leave them, to let them wander in the world alone. They were his pack, they were his everything, and he licked their hands and wheezed, wishing he did not have to go.

  Love you. Love you both.

  As the darkness took him, they held him close, safe and warm, and whispered that they loved him too. That they would love him always. That they would remember.

  He was too heavy for them to carry. And so they stood, hand in hand, watching the snow bury him. One flake at a time, falling from the poisoned skies and covering him like a shroud. Their friend. Their brother. Lying in a pool of dark red, brown fur spattered and torn, black and empty inside his mind.

  When there was only gray again, they turned and walked away.

  * * *

  The edges of the storm had come on them days ago, like thieves in the smothered light of dusk. Fingers of lightning stretched down into the sunset silhouettes of the nearby mountains. The wind buffeted the Child as if it truly were an infant, tossed about in the grip of a cruel, thoughtless giant. Days and nights were spent in fruitless search, the mood of the cloudwalkers growing ever darker as they sailed further and further into the Iishi ranges. The mountains loomed all around them, towering spires of dark stone and pale snow, the echoes of the thunder rolling down their flanks and rumbling among the black valleys at their feet.