Stormdancer

by Jay Kristoff

  THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG.

  What do you mean?

  THE WAY HE MOVES. THE WAY HE SPEAKS.

  “Is everything all right, Kin-san?” Yukiko frowned.

  “Ask Buruu to spread his wings, please.” Kin pulled a leather harness from the trailer, ridged with a series of interlocking gears and pistons. “I need to install the spinal axis first.”

  The arashitora spread his wings, crippled voltage playing along his flat feathertips. The hairs on her arms prickled, the faint scent of ozone pierced the lotus reek. She stepped back and watched Kin work, unable to comprehend the machine he was strapping to Buruu’s back. She could see tension in his movements, hear a catch as his breath billowed from the apparatus coiled on his back.

  “Kin, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head, eye aglow with the arc torch. “I need to concentrate.”

  Yukiko fell silent, watching the pretty rain of sparks, the motion of his hands as he assembled his creation. Long curved rods of iridescence were affixed across the arashitora’s scapular quills and the line of his marginal coverts, extending beyond the severed primary flight feathers. Kin fixed the sheets of hard canvas over the skeletal frame, strapping them in place, tinkering at the series of gears and pistons that ran like a spine down Buruu’s back. Yukiko watched as the minutes ticked by, one atop the other, holding her breath as the mechanism neared completion.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

  Kin paused for a second, sighed and shook his head.

  “All right, try that,” he finally said, stepping back from Buruu.

  The arashitora looked uncertain but spread his wings regardless. Kin’s machine whirred smoothly, unspooling into wide fans, a broad series of canvas quills sitting where the tips of Buruu’s feathers should have been. Bones of shimmering metal, hydraulic muscles and reinforced joints. Buruu flapped again, bounding a few feet into the air, electricity crackling along the iridescent frame. The wings worked perfectly: a sleek song of lubricant and metal teeth, the rush of wind, straw dancing in the downdraft.

  RAIJIN SAVE ME. THE BOY HAS DONE IT.

  “Gods above, they work,” Yukiko beamed. “It works!”

  Buruu leaped into the air, pounding his wings furiously. He sailed up twenty feet, thirty, swooping around their heads, beak clamped tightly on the triumphant roar that threatened to spill over and alert the entire city.

  DO YOU SEE, YUKIKO? DO YOU SEE?

  Yukiko threw her arms around Kin’s neck, planted a kiss on his metal cheek.

  “Kin-san, you did it!”

  Again, the boy extricated himself from her arms, flipping a switch on his belt. The burning blue light of his cutting torch arced at his wrist.

  “He’s not free yet.”

  Buruu landed, claws sparking across stone, shaking his whole body like a soggy hound. The Guildsman bent down and began cutting at the two-inch-thick iron chain around the thunder tiger’s throat. Molten steel spattered red-hot onto the flagstones, the smell of burning metal drifted thick in the air. The arashitora nudged the Guildsman with his cheek and purred, a subtle gesture of thanks that made Yukiko’s heart swell.

  We’re nearly home, Buruu.

  The sound of the gala hung faint in the distance under the rumble of the gathering storm. She thought of the flight to come, into the mouth of the tempest, leaving this stinking city far behind them. Free. At last.

  She looked at Buruu’s wings, pictured the small mechanical arashitora Kin had made for her, still sitting on her dresser.

  “Aiya. I left the toy you made for me in my bedroom.”

  Kin made a sound, deep within his helm. A sneer.

  “Perhaps Lord Hiro can fetch it for you.”

  AH.

  “… What did you say?”

  NOW I SEE.

  Kin fixed her in his molten stare. She could see her face reflected in his single eye, illuminated blue-white by the cutting torch, brief joy dying in her eyes.

  “You heard,” Kin rasped. “Where is Lord Hiro? Shouldn’t he be here ‘protecting’ you?”

  She could feel Buruu in her head, the vaguely self-satisfied air of one who’s finally found the missing piece to a troublesome puzzle. But the smugness was underscored with uncertainty about the danger Kin now posed.

  HE KNOWS.

  * * *

  They descended two more flights of stairs, smooth stone beneath their feet, their breathing too loud in the humid dark. Michi led the way through the tunnels, past the rusting iron bars and cramped cells, the pitiful moaning scarecrows inside. She stopped at each cell with an occupant and unlocked the door, but the emaciated stick-men inside could barely raise their heads at the sound of freedom. At the sixth cage down, a rat twice the size of Aisha’s dog raised its head from its feast and shrieked, bloody mouth open wide.

  The rag-men reminded Michi of the children in her village: flesh draped like translucent cloth around their bones, all elbows and knuckles and hollow cheeks amidst the fat rice fields. Little boys and girls, starving to death, surrounded by so much food. Sometimes she still had nightmares about them; silent waifs standing in the burning village, watching her uncle’s execution.

  When all this was over, when the Guild and the Shōgun were nothing but a bad memory, she would write a book. A true history for Shima’s children to read and feel and remember, that they would know the real price their country had paid for fuel and power. That they would know the names of those who stood in defiance of tyranny, who fought and died so that they might one day be free.

  “The Lotus War.”

  She couldn’t imagine a name more fitting.

  They arrived at Masaru’s cell. Kasumi knelt at the bars and stretched her hands toward him, voice wet with tears. The rice and dried fruit Michi had smuggled in had done him good; he looked stronger and sharper, the flesh on his bones wasn’t so gray. But he was still weak, drunk on stinking heat and lack of sunlight, clothed in grime and tattered rags. She unlocked the cell, turned to Akihito.

  “Can you carry him?”

  The big man didn’t answer, just shouldered past and picked up Masaru in a bear hug, a grin slapped onto his face to hide the anguish at his friend’s condition. Kasumi held tight to Masaru’s hand, kissed him on the lips. Michi wrinkled her nose at the thought of what he must taste like.

  “We need to go,” she hissed, eyeing the corridor.

  “Indeed you do.”

  A match flared in the gloom, a bright hiss of sulfur illuminating a wrinkled face, hard, sunken eyes. Minister Hideo puffed at his pipe, flame pulsing between his fingers, light rippling across the banded armor of the bushimen surrounding him. Naked kodachi glittered in their hands; short, single-bladed swords ideal for close-quarter fighting. Though there were no Iron Samurai among the soldiers, the conspirators were still outnumbered by at least a dozen.

  The sound of footsteps from the stairs made Michi’s heart sink. More bushimen poured down from the entrance, cutting off their escape.

  So many.

  Too many.

  “We are betrayed,” she whispered.

  * * *

  “Kin, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t.” The Guildsman held up one gauntlet, stabbed at the release clasp about his throat. His helmet peeled away in its tiny ballet and he tore it from his head, unplugging it from his skin before dashing it against the ground. Face gleaming with sweat, cheeks blotched with anger. “I feel enough of a fool already. Don’t make it any worse.”

  “Kin, I wanted to tell you…”

  “But you were afraid if you did, I wouldn’t help you, right?”

  “I suppose, but—”

  “So you lied instead. Well, congratulations. You got your way. I hope you get everything you deserve.”

  “I didn’t lie to you, Kin. I just didn’t tell you the whole—”

  BEWARE.

  Yukiko frowned, the sounds of metal footfalls ringing at the edge of hearing.

  What is it?
r />   INSECTS. MANY. THEY ARE COMING.

  The sound grew louder, Kin breaking his stare and glancing about as the din of ō-yoroi and chainkatana rose. Chattering steel and hissing chi.

  “Oh no,” Yukiko breathed.

  Two dozen Iron Samurai charged into the arena from east and west: heavy, steel-shod footsteps, golden jin-haori, neo-daishō filling the air with the growl of serrated metal teeth. Yoritomo stalked at their rear, yards of red silk billowing behind him, one hand resting on the hilt of his katana. His face was torn, four long gouges running down his cheek to his throat. Spattered in blood, hands and face, eyes glazed white in a pale mask splashed with red. Another Iron Samurai walked by his side.

  “Oh, Kin, no.”

  She turned to him, disbelief in her eyes.

  “You told them?”

  34

  STORMDANCER

  Rats screeched in the darkness, their cries echoing among the stink.

  “Lay down your weapons,” Hideo exhaled, the air swimming with cloying lotus smoke. “Or die here and now.”

  “Bastard whoreson,” the big one spat. “I’ll kill you and all your little girlfriends.”

  The giant set the Black Fox down on the cell floor, stepped into the corridor. Hideo noted with faint satisfaction that the fool had chosen his weapon poorly; the corridor was too narrow to swing the kusarigama’s chain. Neither the sickle nor the woman’s bo-staff would be a match for a cadre of bushimen with kodachi. The girl with the tsurugi might prove problematic, however, and of all these traitors, Hideo wanted her alive to question. He had been trying to uncover the Kagé cell within Kigen for years, and suspected there might be more rats in the cellar. A few days in the torture cells, and her singing would put a nightingale to shame.

  “There is no need for violence,” the old man smiled. “Yield now and we will show you mercy.”

  “Like you showed at Daiyakawa?” the girl spat.

  “Or to Captain Yamagata?” sneered the woman.

  Hideo sighed, leaned on his walking stick. He was getting too old for this nonsense. All things being equal, he’d rather be taking a nice, cool bath. He turned to the bushiman captain, drawing slowly on his pipe as the man met his stare. The lotus in the tiger’s mouth flared bright, reflected in tired, bloodshot eyes.

  “Bring me the girl alive.”

  The dragon uncoiled upon his tongue.

  “Kill the others.”

  * * *

  The Iron Samurai fanned out around the periphery of the arena floor, weapons drawn and ready, all growling teeth and rumbling motors. They glared out from behind their horned oni masks, the black enamel on their ō-yoroi gleaming a bloody scarlet in the light of the smothered sun. Buruu roared in warning, setting the iron plates squealing. The air was filled with static electricity, broken fingers of blue current running along the iridescent skeleton of his wings. He set his eyes on Kin, ready to end the boy for his betrayal.

  “Kin, how could you do this to us?” Yukiko demanded.

  “What?” A whisper.

  “How could you tell them?”

  “… You think I betrayed you?”

  “How else did they find out?”

  “I gave you my word.” Wounded eyes. Voice catching in his throat. “I gave Buruu his wings. I would never betray you, Yukiko. Never.”

  Yukiko blinked, breathing hard, searching that knife-bright stare and finding only truth. She glanced back at Buruu, ashamed of her suspicion, unable to look Kin in the face. At that moment, she realized the boy had risked everything for them. He had discovered the truth about Hiro, known that she had deceived him. Despite all of that, he had stayed true to his promise.

  But if it wasn’t Kin who betrayed them …

  THE SISTER.

  “Aisha?” Yukiko frowned at the Shōgun.

  Yoritomo sneered, wiped one hand across the bloody gouges on his cheek.

  “No, my sister refused to betray you. And still she dared beg for mercy.” His eyes danced with the memory. “She found none.”

  Bloody fingers curled into a fist.

  “Nor will you.”

  Yukiko swallowed.

  “Then how did you know?”

  The Iron Samurai standing next to Yoritomo reached into the folds of his jin-haori. He hurled a small, glittering object across the arena floor, bouncing and skidding to rest amidst the dirty straw. Kin’s gift: the tiny, mechanical arashitora.

  “Little escapes the attention of Minister Hideo,” Yoritomo smiled. “Or his spies. Lord Hiro was most eager to make amends for his failure after your first round of treachery.”

  Yukiko narrowed her eyes, sucking in a long, trembling breath.

  “Hiro?”

  “So pretty on the outside.” The Iron Samurai’s voice sounded hollow and breathless within his oni helm. His eyes were green glass. Empty, flat mirrors. “But inside you’re black and rotten. A liar and a whore. Kitsune trash.”

  She took a step back, as if he’d struck her.

  Buruu growled and dug his claws into the floor, flagstones cracking to rubble.

  GIVE HIM NOTHING. HE DESERVES EVEN LESS.

  “Kitsune trash is good enough for a Tora samurai to lay down with though, right? Good enough to sleep with to get what you need?” She shook her head, her voice a low hiss. “You’re the whore, Hiro. Living your whole life on your knees, never once looking up from your master’s shadow to see what’s happening to the people around you. Serving a throne that fills its land with ashes and its children with cancer.”

  Yoritomo laughed, slapping Hiro on the broad, flat spaulder covering his shoulder.

  “She still has some spirit, eh? Peasant fire?”

  “And you?” Yukiko turned on the Shōgun. “You make a wasteland and call it an empire. You’re a parasite. A leech, bloated with the blood of your people.” She spat on the ground at his feet. “Baby killer.”

  Yoritomo’s smile died on his lips. He slowly drew his katana from its scabbard: three feet of gleaming steel, patterns of light rippling across the metal like sunlight on rushing water. He leveled the blade at Yukiko’s head.

  “Leave the arashitora alive,” he growled. “Kill the others.”

  * * *

  Masaru could barely stand.

  He slumped against the wall, breath rattling in his lungs, watching the shapes dance in the dark. Michi was a blur, a shadow melting from one spot to the next, tsurugi glinting in the glow of Hideo’s pipe. She lashed out, catching one bushiman across the throat with her blade. The man spun like a top, clutching the red spray at his neck. The girl slid down into a split, kimono riding up around her hips, plunging her weapon into another soldier’s crotch.

  Akihito was bleeding from a slash across his shoulder, back to back with Kasumi as she struck out with her bo, sending a bushiman’s blade clattering from nerveless fingers. She broke the man’s leg and pushed his face in with two rapid-fire blows, sending him back into his fellows with a bloody gasp. Another two bushimen launched a savage riposte that she barely deflected, and three fingers from her left hand sailed off into the dark. She cried out, barely able to keep a grip on her staff, leaning back into Akihito. The floor was slick with blood, treacherous beneath their feet. Though the trio was making a brave fight of it, their foes were too many. It would only be moments before they were overrun.

  There in the dark, with death a few breaths away, Masaru thought of his daughter. He thought of her arms wrapped around him as she gave him her forgiveness, here in this very cell. He thought of her as a little girl, running in the woods with her brother, pure as new snow, stretching out with the fresh, trembling gift toward the faint sparks of life that lingered in the dying bamboo.

  The gift he had urged them to hide.

  The gift he had passed to them both.

  Yōkai blood.

  Hunt Master. Black Fox of Shima. He had hidden it well, ever since he was a boy, even from his sensei. Even as he eclipsed his master and became the greatest hunter in the Empire. Rikkima
ru had often joked that Masaru was gifted. If only the old man had known …

  Naomi knew. She had loved him for it, thought of the Kenning as a blessing from the Gods. He still treasured the memory of the joy in her eyes when she told him he had passed it to their children. But by then, the “gift” had seemed a curse to him. A blessing he had squandered, used only to make himself a more efficient killer. Forcing the wolves into his pits, the foxes into his snares. The last eagle he had ever seen died on the tip of one of his arrows. At his command, the serpent children of the Naga Queen had turned and devoured each other in front of their own mother, the last of the Black Yōkai blinded by tears of grief as he ended her. The gods had not intended it to be so. Kitsune would have been ashamed of him.

  And so when Naomi died, he drowned his grief and the Kenning both, in liquor, in the cloying stink of lotus smoke. To forget what he had become, his abuse of the gift he had turned to butchery. Like a prisoner, he closed it off in a dark room in his mind, hoping it would atrophy and fade, the memories of all the blood he had spilled along with it.

  But the long hours of sweating de-tox in this pit had cleared the cobwebs from his skull. He could see the doorway clearly now, the one he had closed and locked so many years before.

  He watched the steel dance in front of him, heard Michi cry out. He saw Akihito take a blade to the thigh, opening a gash that was almost bone-deep. A sword sank up to the hilt in Kasumi’s gut, another into her chest, blood spraying from between her teeth. And Masaru walked down the long dusty corridor in his mind, and stood before that rusted iron door. Reaching out with shaking fingers, he turned the handle and opened it.

  Off in the dark, the prison rats pricked up their ears, and listened.

  * * *

  The Iron Samurai charged.

  The bloodlust swelled within Buruu, spilling over into Yukiko, minds instinctively reaching toward each other. Two sets of eyes, six feet planted on the earth, the strength of their wings knotted tight at their shoulder blades, tantō in their hand. They were in the Iishi again, Lady Izanami’s Red Bone Warlord roaring in the rain, the taste of black blood on their tongue. She leaped up onto his back, slipped into his mind. They bared their teeth and screamed their challenge, a roar drowning out the growling swords, the hiss of armored death charging at them headlong.