Rei’s eyes were still locked on the horizon. “What is it, brother Bo?”
“Priority Red message from Chapterhouse Kigen, Commander.”
That got Rei’s attention. He pulled back on the stirrups, slowing Earthcrusher’s advance, turning to stare at Bo with his shifting telescopics. “Report.”
“Second Bloom Kensai has awoken from his coma. He is sorely wounded, but the False-Lifers say he will make a full recovery.”
“First Bloom be praised. But why was this sent Priority Red? And encoded?”
“Second Bloom does not wish anyone outside this vessel to be aware of his intentions.”
“Intentions?”
Bo nodded. “Second Bloom intends to oversee the destruction of the Kagé and all who abet them personally. He is traveling here to do so.”
A murmur of delight rippled amongst the assembled bridge staff. Rei rose up in his pilot’s harness, amazement in his voice. “Kensai is coming to the Earthcrusher?”
“Hai.”
Bo nodded, dread dancing on his tongue.
“He is already on his way.”
26
THIS MOMENT
Her ears had long ago gone numb and empty, the barrage of wind and rain and thunder turning all to hollow glass. There was no sunlight, not even a broken promise beyond the mile-deep cloud, as if Lady Amaterasu were afraid to show her face in the realm of her hated brother, Susano-ō. But Yukiko still wore her goggles, if only to spare her eyes the constant strobe of blinding blue-white. Spreading across the roiling gray like cracks in the sky itself, the ceiling of the world poised to crumble and crush everything below.
Like nothing she’d ever imagined. A war. A bedlam.
Everstorm.
Buruu thrilled to every lightning strike, purred with every thunderclap. His love of the chaos spilled into her, and she found herself grinning as if moon-touched, drenched to her very bones by the sideways rain. Wind like a hurricane. Thunder like a marathon pulse.
How close are we?
VERY.
What should I expect when we get there?
BLOOD.
Buruu’s growl traveled up her thighs, settled in her belly.
BLOOD LIKE RAIN.
Torr?
YES.
Finish the story. What happened after Sukaa blinded your brother? You said your father did nothing? Wasn’t he angry?
FURIOUS. BUT WE WERE ARASHITORA. NOT LIKE HUMANS. NO JUDICIARY. NO MAGISTRATES. THERE IS ONLY BEAK AND TALON. ONLY BLOOD FOR BLOOD.
Couldn’t he demand Sukaa be blinded too?
HE DID. A MESSAGE WAS SENT TO MORCHEBA. KAIAH’S MATE DELIVERED IT—AN ARASHITORA CALLED KOUU. MY FATHER DEMANDED SUKAA RECEIVE A PUNISHMENT FITTING THE CRIME.
And what did Torr say?
HE SAID IF MY FATHER WISHED TO DICTATE JUSTICE, THEN HE SHOULD CHALLENGE FOR THE RULE OF WEST AND EAST. THEN HE GAVE KOUU A NICE SCAR TO REMEMBER HIM BY, AND SENT HIM ON HIS WAY.
So Torr was testing your father. Seeing how far he’d go?
INDEED.
Images swirled in the blood-warm depths of Buruu’s mind, Yukiko watching through the eye of memory. She saw a gathering of the Everstorm pack, a greatmoot attended by every buck and dam and cub. Buruu’s father spoke of Torr’s defiance, explained that to take offense would mean war between Everstorm and the Others. And then, for the first time in as long as any could remember, the Khan asked for counsel.
Amidst the howling silence, Esh raised his voice, bitter with hatred. It was not just, he said. Not right. Sukaa had taken his eye. Sukaa must pay. And if that meant blood in the skies, and death to the Others, so be it.
Drahk agreed with his brother. It would be the coward’s way to let the insult go unpunished. Other bucks raised voice in agreement, blood rising, eyes flashing. Perhaps it had been too long. Perhaps this ritual combat and life of peace had made them soft. Afraid.
An elderly dam spoke then—a grand old beast, near blinded by the years, her stripes a dulled silver. Crea was her name, eldest of all in Everstorm, wise beyond counting. She stood amongst the other Elders, speaking of war’s folly. The pointlessness of vengeance. How killing Sukaa, Torr, every arashitora in Morcheba, would not return Esh’s eye.
The other Elders crowed assent.
Wisdom, they cried. Wisdom.
A tumult of roars drowned the Elders out, Drahk and Esh loudest of all. And amidst the cacophony, the Khan stepped forth, wings spread wide. Amber eyes aglow with storm’s kiss, the brilliant cracks splitting the sky. He was muscle and beak and claw. The greatest ruler Everstorm had known. And he spoke a word that brought stillness, the bucks’ fire dying as if freezing water had been dashed onto hot coals.
Extinction, he said.
They were so few. To fight a war meant to lessen themselves further, and drive a wedge between Black and White that would live for decades. They’d fled Shima for the sake of survival. To risk all now? Even over a wound as grievous as Esh had suffered?
There was one true law for the thunder tigers of Everstorm. One commandment, laid down by she who first led them from Shima’s poisoned shores. Black. White. Young. Old. It did not matter. Arashitora did not kill arashitora.
Assent rippled amongst the greatmoot, the rage in the breasts of the males growing still. They were so few. Their grip so tenuous.
The Khan spoke true.
Buruu could see the pain of betrayal in Esh’s eye. The unveiled fury in Drahk’s gaze. But his brothers were young—too young to challenge their father and win. And so they bowed their heads and submitted, like loyal subjects and loyal sons would.
The passing of years. The turning of seasons like dawn and dusk in Buruu’s mind’s eye. Yukiko saw him grow, flourish, becoming the thunder tiger she knew. Watching him soar amongst the clouds, chasing the female he’d called Shai through the lightning strikes. Watching Esh’s resentment fester, hatred gleaming in his eye, poisoning Drahk along with him. It was only love for his father that kept the toxins from Buruu’s own heart. But he knew the day would come when his eldest brother would challenge for the title of Khan.
But for now, Drahk was still too young. The Khan too strong. All knew it.
The Others hadn’t been seen since the incident with Sukaa. But word came through a nomad who wandered the northern seas that Torr wished an end to hostilities. That the packs should once again meet in the summer, as they had in happier days. And though Buruu knew Torr was an opportunist, though Drahk counseled against accepting the Morcheban Khan’s overtures, their father saw wisdom in it. To end the pointless standoff. To bring stillness after years of empty aggression.
Yukiko saw the Khan standing atop the aerie in the midst of the endless tempest. The nest was empty now, Buruu’s mother having passed the previous winter, leaving Skaa alone in quiet grief. And Buruu stood at his father’s back and watched the Khan watching his kingdom. The mighty thunder tiger seemed smaller somehow, bent with the burden of it all.
Esh will never forgive if you accept Torr’s peace, Buruu growled.
No, his father agreed.
You choose Others over blood.
I choose future. For all our kind.
Future?
One day you rule, my Triumph. One day you understand. To think not of one, but all. One day there will be no black. No white. Only gray.
They will hate you. Drahk. Esh.
Then let them challenge.
Skaa turned to his son. His favored one.
Who claims Khan is Khan.
He sent Buruu the next day, the only son he trusted to deliver his words. Flying east to Morcheba, meeting with Sukaa. The Khan-son’s arrogance seemed to have dimmed in intervening years, and Buruu saw something akin to regret in his eyes. He delivered his father’s message—Everstorm would accept the Morcheban peace, if the rules of the Bloodstone were laid as law. No permanent injury. No death. Those who broke this law to be punished in kind.
Sukaa accepted, nodding deep before flying away. And Buruu flew back toward E
verstorm, rankling at Sukaa’s escape from justice, but beginning to see the breadth of it. The depth of it. That his father was wise to accept peace. To fight not to avenge past wounds, but to build the future. Something greater.
No black. No white. Only gray.
Shai intercepted him miles from Everstorm, breath heaving in her lungs, sorrow and dread in her eyes. And as she dashed toward him across darkening skies, he knew something terrible had happened. Something that would never be undone.
The Khan is dead.
The news like a blow. Gut to water. Heart to stone.
Unthinkable.
Impossible.
How?
Drahk and Esh.
… Two may not challenge one?
No challenge.
Grief in her eyes. Grief and rage.
Just murder.
A travesty. An outrage. Their own father? What madness had driven them to this brink? This betrayal? It was too much to comprehend. A blood-red tide rising in his sight, filling the endless mileage between dawn and dusk with fury, and turning all to scarlet.
Shai called his name as he flew away, begging him to stop. But there was no self in that moment. There was only red and the memory of the day he’d first taken to the wing beside his father burning bright in his mind. Everything gone before, everything to come after, all of it washed away by the blood-bright rush of rage. The Khan’s aerie in the distance, growing closer with every breath, every beat of his wings, fury growing beside it.
Drahk circled the aerie, the mark of their father’s talons etched down bloody flanks. He called to Buruu across the storm. Seeking parlay. Urging stillness. But there were no words. No moment in which to speak to this one he’d called brother. There was only a roar of challenge, striking like a thunderbolt, screaming fury. A moment of impact, ten thousand hammers strong, iron-gray and deafening. Brawling across storm-torn skies, strobing lightning, thunder pounding. The sea dragons goaded to frenzy in the oceans below, thrashing in the bloody rain. No thought. No pause. Simply doing, on and above and between, a whirling flurry of talons and beaks and furious roars. And when it ended there was heat and salt, rushing warm and slick down Buruu’s throat and Drahk plummeting from the skies, trailing blood like ribbons through the rain.
His brother’s body hit the water amidst the flash of silvered tails, sea dragons grinning with translucent katana teeth. Buruu turned to the Khan’s throne below, the sibling lying curled in a puddle of tepid red, torn from throat to belly by their father’s claws.
The Everstorm pack had gathered to watch the brothers clash, roaring outrage as Buruu dropped screaming from the skies. Shai’s cry was a gentle murmur under the pulse in his ears, the madness filling and flooding and pushing all else aside. He landed atop his brother, Esh too weak from blood loss to even struggle, the fear of death already gleaming in his one good eye. Broken wings flapping feebly, a croak spilling from his bleeding throat.
Mercy.
He dared?
Mercy, brother.
Better to ask the sun not to rise and set. To ask mighty Raijin to still his endless drums. No father. No mother. No mate. No pack. No storm. No light. No dark. Only death. Filling his veins, stealing reason and sight and sound. And Buruu tore and bit until there was nothing left, until nothing remained of Esh but a bloody smear of feathers and broken bones. Drenching himself. Drowning in it. Mouthful after bloody mouthful.
Thunder in the aftermath. The percussion of his own pulse.
The cries of the pack.
Madness, they roared. Madness had taken the Khan-sons, and brought all to ruin.
The Elders looked down, no pity in their gaze. Exile they called him. Outcast. Thunder tigers did not slay one another. Such had been the law since the exodus from Shima. Especially not their own blood. Their own kin. Wretched murderers though they themselves might be.
Other voices were raised. Shai’s in Buruu’s defense. Kouu and Kaiah also. Buruu was Khan now, they claimed. He was the law.
Arashitora do not kill arashitora, the Elders cried.
Who claims Khan is Khan, the response.
And the taste of blood hung thick on Buruu’s tongue, the taste of the brothers he’d laid to rest. And his father’s words hung heavy in the air, stained with copper’s tang.
One day you rule, my Triumph. One day you understand. To think not of one, but all.
Buruu closed his eyes. His father’s ghost standing beside him, turning his back in shame.
I choose a future. For all our kind.
And this was the future his sons had wrought.
He could have claimed it. The seat of Khan. He’d challenged, and he’d won. But the law was the law. Death had come to Everstorm, not in the guise of Father Time or happenstance, but of brothers and sons. Of hatred and vengeance. No true Khan would have it so. No Triumph.
They took his name. Cast him out. Drenched in his kin’s blood. He and his brothers, murderers all, would never be spoken of in Everstorm again. And through the grief, beyond the beast he’d succumbed to, he knew it right. He knew it just. Shai begged him to stay. Kouu and Kaiah also. What would happen when the Morcheban blacks returned? With so many of Everstorm’s warriors slain or gone? What if Torr claimed Everstorm for his own?
What of me? Shai asked. What of us?
No answer. No voice. Only shame. The memory of his father’s words and the taste of his brothers on his tongue. He’d lost himself. Become nothing but a beast. Wretched. Broken. And he turned his back on Everstorm, everything inside it. The Elders’ words ringing in his ears, the name they’d given to replace the one his father had bestowed.
No Roahh. No Triumph.
Only Kinslayer.
… ONLY KINSLAYER.
* * *
There were no words. No words for miles.
Tears in Yukiko’s eyes. Arms wrapped around his neck. All this time he’d kept it hidden. The shame. The guilt. She’d had no idea what she was asking when she’d begged him to come back here. No idea what he’d be returning to. Torr had come, just as Kaiah feared. And the Everstorm bucks who stood against him had been killed, along with their cubs, the Morcheban Khan laying claim to the Everstorm throne. Yukiko could see why Kaiah hated him. At last, she understood the female’s seething animosity.
But …
It wasn’t your fault.
OF COURSE IT WAS.
You weren’t yourself. You weren’t thinking.
THAT EXCUSES NOTHING. I MURDERED MY OWN BROTHERS.
You avenged your father.
AND FOUND IN VENGEANCE NOT ONE MOMENT’S PEACE. I BECAME AS THEY. JUST AS GUILTY. JUST AS STAINED. NOTHING BUT BEASTS, ALL.
In the distance, she could see islands; dark, gleaming stone, spewing fire and smoke into the endless chaos above. Cinders falling incandescent between the raindrops, clouds built of ashes and storms. Reaching out into the tempest, she could feel shapes—predatory and prideful. Arashitora, black and white, calling across the roiling clouds, roaring warning to their Khan.
The Kinslayer comes.
She felt helpless. There was nothing she could do to make him feel better. To make it all right. This shadow that hung about his shoulders, this loathing that had settled on his insides.
SO NOW YOU KNOW. THE TRUTH OF WHO I AM.
My brother.
BEAST.
My best friend.
MURDERER.
You’re my everything.
She pushed her cheek into his neck, squeezed her eyes shut tight. Willing the pain gone, trying to fill him with warmth and light.
I love you.
… STILL?
Always.
A black shape stood tall and fierce on the spire of stone ahead, burning green eyes, vast wings spread in threat, edged with the light of molten stone.
IF I FALL …
You won’t.
BUT IF I DO …
You can’t.
The strength of him. Flooding her mind as Yoritomo took his feathers. As they defeated
the Red Bone Warlord and his legion of oni. As they tore ironclads to flaming tatters, brought the nation to its feet, thousands of eyes alight with wonder as they soared overhead. She reminded him of it all, flooding him with images of every triumph, every moment they’d shared since all this began, since she first reached out from the Thunder Child and touched his mind.
It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. Who you were. All that counts is what you’re doing. Who you are. Right now. This moment.
AND WHO AM I?
You know as well as I do.
The black shape roared; a challenge echoing amidst smoking stone, rising steam, cinder rain. To challenge the new Khan of Everstorm was to challenge to the death. No quarter. No mercy. He could flee now, back into exile, back into shame. Turn from the scene of his failure, the ruin he’d made, the bloodstains he’d left behind on the stone.
*I KNOW WHO YOU ARE, KINSLAYER.*
The black shape rose from its throne, vast and cruel and cold. Yukiko squeezed him tight, pouring all she had inside him as Buruu opened his beak to roar above the endless storm.
YOU KNOW WHO I WAS. NOT WHO I AM.
*AND WHO ARE YOU, THEN?*
The song of the Thunder God filled the sky.
The thunder tiger roared in answer.
I AM BURUU.
PART THREE
DEATH
“You cannot leave, love!”
Her scream echoed in the black. “Stay you here with me!”
The Maker God wept, for Yomi had marred his bride, claimed her as its own.
Spurned, she spit her troth; one thousand deaths, every day. Her solitude’s price.
“Then I will give life,” great Lord Izanagi vowed,
“To fifteen hundred.”
—from the Book of Ten Thousand Days