Endsinger

  And still they fell.

  Yukiko screamed warning as the pair finally broke their deadly embrace, each swooping up and away from the ocean’s surface, broken feathers of black and white and bloodstained canvas in their wake. Sea dragons hissed their frustration as the pair spiraled out of reach, thrashing the water to blinding sprays.

  Torr roared, rage and mockery spilling across the storm.

  *WEAKLING. HIDING BEHIND FALSE WINGS.*

  The black circled wide, rage building to a boil. Yukiko could feel the ache in his paws, cut bloody on pinions that refused to break. The Khan was confused about the clockwork on Buruu’s back and wings—what it meant, how it worked. And though he was as ferociously intelligent as Buruu had been when they first met, Torr lacked a mind of men or metal. He didn’t know what a machine was, how to overcome it. All he knew was that wings were an arashitora’s greatest strength and greatest weakness, and the first to lose one would be the first to die.

  *NO KHAN, YOU.*

  A roar of frustration. Rage.

  *KINSLAYER.*

  Yukiko reached across the void, whispering into Buruu’s mind.

  Your wings. He doesn’t know what they are.

  I KNOW.

  You have to stop using them as shields. They break, you fall.

  TRUST ME.

  Buruu, I can kill him with a thought. I could reach out right now and—

  TRUST ME.

  Thunder tore the skies, a battery of cannon rumbling up her spine. Fists clenched, mouth dry as she watched them circling. Torr roared again, spitting insults and hatred at the Kinslayer. Who was he to challenge? This monkey’s pet? This son of a line gone mad? If not for Torr, this pack would have fallen to ruin. If not for Torr, Everstorm would be a graveyard littered with the bones of their race.

  And through it all Buruu stayed silent as tombs. Why spend breath on insult? Waste strength on bravado? The human in him, the human in her in him, understood—a tempered intelligence layered over animal cunning, a soul-deep change wrought by the bond between them. She’d made him more. They’d made each other so much more.

  Torr was older, stronger. But Buruu had the capacity for reason, subterfuge, and above all, patience. And for a moment, Yukiko found herself believing. That he could win. That he would triumph. But only for a moment.

  A gust of wind caught the Khan’s wings, buoying him higher. He wheeled and dove across the brink, colliding with Buruu like a thunderbolt. Lost in frenzy, targeting the metal wings that had thwarted blow after blow, now caught in his talons. The Khan clutched a fistful of the mechanism running down Buruu’s spine, ripping and tearing, delicate gears tumbling like brass snow amongst the raindrops. Feeling them break, ripped to ribbons at last, at last, the Khan roared victory. Buruu twisted in his harness, kicking out with his hind legs as the pair once again fell from the clouds, blood and canvas feathers flying.

  Spinning.

  Plummeting.

  Torr’s claws digging into Buruu’s shoulders. Ripping through the harness pinning the device to his back, tearing one false wing completely away, the broken pinion falling in a wretched spiral as Yukiko screamed and the Khan bellowed in triumph. Lightning illuminated the pair, light and shadow, spiraling toward the bloody waves. Clutching each other as death reached for them both. Inseparable as lovers all the way to their grave. With a desperate roar and the bright ring of splitting metal, Buruu tore free of the harness, twisting and seizing Torr’s flank, claws finding purchase beneath the Khan’s ribs. And with a kick that tore him free of the broken harness, leather snapping, bolts splitting and spinning bright into the void, Buruu’s talons tore the Khan open from sternum to groin.

  Torr roared, blood-flecked and defiant, tearing the contraption to pieces as his guts unfurled, trailing out behind him as the pair fell. Tumbling. Bleeding. Screaming. The Khan hit the water; a brilliant scarlet spray, foaming flurries, the dance of teeth like glittering swords. Yukiko’s eyes were wide, scream frozen behind clenched teeth as Buruu plunged toward that same frenzy, wings spread to slow his descent. But he was too far from the broken islands to make it to safety, the water between filled with golden eyes and glittering, translucent fangs. Even if he managed to glide …

  To glide …

  Lightning crashed, illuminating the thunder tiger swooping away from the boiling froth. Wings outspread. Feather-tips rippling with faint electricity. Not the severed feathers left in the wake of Yoritomo’s blade. Not the ugly, squared-off shapes that had grounded him in the Razor Isles, made him incapable of anything but a feeble, wobbling glide.

  Feathers—pearlescent, whole and perfect and beautiful.

  In her memory, she saw the severed feather she’d held in Five Flowers Palace as she waited in the dark for his return. Torn free during the clash with Kaiah in the Daimyo’s garden.

  No. Not torn free …

  The pair of them flying over the Iishi, just days after her father had died.

  How long until you molt? she’d asked.

  I WILL HAVE NO NEW PLUMAGE FOR MONTHS. NOT UNTIL MY WINTER COAT GROWS IN.

  Sitting together in the rain by the Kagé pit trap, alone in the wilderness, waiting for the hunters to become the hunted.

  Father said you would molt your feathers. Like a bird. Is that true?

  TWICE YEARLY. SUMMER AND WINTER.

  Summer.

  A smile on her lips.

  And winter.

  She’d missed it. Tangled in fears of Earthcrushers and gaijin hordes. Blinded by the storm clouds over the Seven Isles, her own traumas, failing to notice the feather trail he’d left scattered about the gardens. Speaking not a word. A tiger’s cunning. An eagle’s pride.

  Buruu roared, echoing amongst the thunderclaps, the day-bright salvos of lightning. And Yukiko raised her hands into the air and screamed, laughing like a lunatic as he soared through the deluge, wings spread in all their glory—a beauty she’d almost forgotten. Lost eons ago on the Thunder Child beneath her father’s blade. Lost again in the stinking pit of Kigen arena, sundered by a madman’s pride. But no man or blade was here to touch him now. Just the Storm God and his children, bellowing triumph across tempest skies. Bloodied and torn, but beautiful. Beautiful and whole and perfect, as he’d been in the moment she first saw him, touching his mind for the first time, his voice as deafening as the peals of thunder crashing through the skies around her.

  WHO ARE YOU? he’d asked.

  Yukiko, she’d replied.

  WHAT ARE YOU?

  She flooded his mind with warmth, with love, relief and joy and the thrill of victory. Everything would be all right now. She knew it. As surely as she knew herself.

  You’re beautiful, Buruu. You’re BEAUTIFUL!

  He reared up in the storm, turned on the Everstorm pack, eyes ablaze. And the sky was filled with his voice, as loud as Raijin’s drums, echoing in the spaces between the rain and the thrumming halls of their hearts.

  I AM THE GET OF SKAA, KHAN-SON, EXILED AND NOW RETURNED. I AM A CHILD OF EVERSTORM, AND I CLAIM ITS RULE THIS DAY, IN THE EYES OF FATHER RAIJIN, AT THE SEAT OF HIS FATHER, SUSANO-Ō.

  I AM HE WHO WAS ROAHH, THEN KINSLAYER, NOW REFORGED ANEW IN BLOOD AND THUNDER.

  I AM KHAN.

  Thunder rocked the skies; the triumphant bellow of the Storm God’s son.

  I.

  AM.

  BURUU.

  30

  PURIFICATION

  Weeksend.

  Rain spattered on corrugated roofs, a stutter-step beat filling the gutted warehouse district with the ring of hollow sticks on empty drums. Yoshi trudged through Downside, the stench of old smoke and char strung heavy in the air. He could hear the rhythms of Kigen Bay under the downpour’s heartbeat, smell the stink of rot beneath the fire’s leavings.

  The satchel of Yakuza money slapped against his back as he walked, and he tossed fistfuls of coin at the blacklung beggars as he passed. The tsurugi sword was a comforting threat beneath his oilskin cloak, the bulk of the near em
pty iron-thrower nudging the small of his back. The Scorpion Children’s money could have paid for some fancy digs in an Upside bedhouse, but he’d felt like sleeping rough. Like they used to back in the day, when every copper bit was a blessing, every meal a stroke of fortune. Before the entire world went mad.

  Him, Hana, and Jurou.

  Yoshi reached beneath his goggles, wiped at his eyes. The memory of the Shinshi’s bride, the terror on her face as he’d picked up her babe …

  “Don’t you touch my son!”

  He walked. Past refugees huddled in Kigen’s burned-out shells, through crumpled, dirty streets and shadows of broken sky-spires. A motor-rickshaw roared faintly in the distance, his boots slapping the ash-choked floor. Figures brushed past him beneath filthy paper parasols, hungry eyes stared from dead-end alley mouths. But the blade showing just beneath his cloak and the dozen corpse-rats following him told even the most desperate folk that he wasn’t a meal to be swallowed in one bite.

  Head down. Shoulders slumped. Unthinking. Following his feet as the press of people grew thicker, sewer children spreading out about him, scampering through the riots’ leavings. He didn’t know where he was walking. What he was doing. Only the woman’s face as he hoisted her son from the crib. Staring as if he were some kind of monster.

  As if?

  A phantom rising unbidden in his mind. Messy bangs hanging over dark, moist eyes. Lips soft as pillows, pressed sweetly against his own. And the ache, gods, the ache in his chest …

  I got them for you, Princess.

  Fist clenched beneath his cloak.

  I got them.

  So why didn’t he feel better? Why didn’t it go away? He could still smell the blood on his hands. Still hear the words of the thunder tiger in his mind.

  YOU WILL FIND NO PEACE IN IT. THE STAINS NEVER WASH OFF. I KNOW.

  Never wash off …

  Jurou was still dead. The hole in him still empty. And his baby sister? The one person who mattered in all the world? He’d left her alone with the weight of a clan on her shoulders.

  What was he still doing here?

  He stopped amidst the crush, people pushing past into a broad, cobbled space. He realized he’d wandered to the Market Square, following the tide without thought. Gawpers and fanatics. Beggars and streetwalkers. One or two bushimen amidst the mob. And up ahead, in the sunken mall surrounded by four looming chunks of blackened stone, there they stood. Four Guildsmen in tabards of the Purifier Sect, the pristine white stained ugly gray. Black rain beaded on burnished brass, the horrid, blood-red eyes aglow, scorch marks smudged about the flame-spitters at their wrists.

  Yoshi pulled his hat over his eyes, toxins dripping from the brim in a treacle waterfall. A Purifier stepped forward, hands held aloft. He spoke in a voice like dying lotusflies; a snatch of scripture from the Book of Ten Thousand Days:

  “Soiled by Yomi’s filth,

  The taint of the Underworld,

  Izanagi wept.

  Seeking Purity,

  The Way of the Cleansing Rite,

  The Maker God bathed.

  And from these waters,

  Were begat Sun, Moon and Storm.

  Walk Purity’s Way.”

  A few hoarse cries went up from the mob, a few fists raised. The crowd swelled, threatening to knock Yoshi off his feet. Desperate faces and desperate stares—the wax-paper look of people running on no sleep, no food, families starving and children weeping. Refugees from the northern fronts, shell-shocked faces hidden behind dirty kerchiefs. Neo-chōnin merchants who’d lost their fortunes in the unrest. All of them drawn to this place like moths to flame—this one semblance of order remaining from better days.

  Even if it was the worst those days had to offer.

  A second Purifier unfurled a scroll, rice-paper stained by filth-spattered skies.

  “By order of the First Bloom of the Lotus Guild, the Purifier Sect is charged with purging the taint of yōkai in Shima’s bloodstream. The corruption of the spirit world, the poison of beasts in the minds of men, the stain of Impurity. As always, at this weeksend Purification, a one and two-thirds measure of chi and five iron kouka shall be granted any loyal citizen who walks the path of righteousness and brings forth any Impure for judgment upon the Altar of Purity.”

  The Guildsman rolled up his scroll, peered into the crowd with bloody eyes.

  “Are there any who would lay accusation?”

  “I do!”

  A graveled bellow from the crowd. The sea parted before a burly man, a stalking tiger inked down his right arm, three linked rings of the merchant guild on his left. In one muscular arm, the man held another fellow, head lolling, barely keeping his feet.

  “What is your name, citizen?” demanded the Guildsman.

  “Tora Watari, a humble merchant. I run the Geisha House on Arena Boulevard.”

  “Come forward and be heard at this Altar!”

  The merchant pushed past the gawkers, dragging the second fellow with him. Yoshi could see the man was elderly—long gray hair in bedraggled knots, skin cracked from a life beneath the red sun.

  The merchant stopped before the sunken mall, cast a steady gaze about the Burning Stones. The Purifiers looked up at him, eyes aglow, merciless and insectoid.

  “The cleansing of the Impure is our most sacred duty, commanded in the Book of Ten Thousand Days by the Maker God himself. But you should know, citizen, any bearing false witness against their fellows will take their place upon the Altar. To pervert this sacred right with slander is to pervert the will of the Maker God himself. You understand this?”

  “I do,” the merchant nodded.

  “Then level your claim.”

  “This bastard,” the merchant shook the old man, “moved into Arena Boulevard a few nights ago. A flute slinger who busked on corners. I thought little of it. But then I heard from my girls that he made the corpse-rats dance for the gutter-waifs’ amusement. I saw this with my own eyes. The vermin moved to his music, standing on their hind legs as if they were people. And when one child asked how he did it, the old man said it was a gift from the gods.”

  “Blasphemer!” cried one of the mob.

  “Burn him!” went the cry.

  Yoshi shook his head. All the shit this world was in. All the chaos right outside those walls. Gaijin armies poised to wipe the lands clean. People set to fight and die against an army of iron and black smoke. And these fools waste time with this madness?

  “Still yourselves, citizens!” The Purifier’s shout drowned out the screeches. “Claim is leveled. Bring him forward, brothers, that we may know the truth of it.”

  Purifiers took the old man from the merchant’s arms, dragging him beneath the Burning Stones. Brief lightning lit the skies, Yoshi squinting behind his goggles, catching a glint of metal in the crowd. A crooked face. Narrowed eyes. Gone now, too quick to see.

  The Purifiers were gathered about the old man, forming a screen between themselves and the crowd. Even standing on tiptoes, Yoshi couldn’t see for the mob and the rain and the wall of glinting brass. Eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks, the boy reached out in the Kenning, to the dozens of corpse-rats scattered about the Square, finding one little crooked mongrel crouched amidst the kindling at the Stones’ feet. And as Yoshi’s skin crawled with the bites of phantom fleas, he forced those tiny eyes of black glass up to watch the Purifiers work.

  The Guildsmen held the old man in a pitiless grip. A blade gleamed, marked with kanji of the Guild. Blood flowed from a cut wrist, the old man struggling, scarlet dripping into a vial in a Purifier’s hand. When the vial was full, the Guildsman carried it to a bench, stacked with half a dozen identical iron boxes, perhaps a foot square, again embossed with Guild sigils.

  Yoshi watched through stolen eyes, fascinated despite himself. In days past, this ritual would have been performed within chapterhouse walls. He couldn’t fathom why the Guild had taken to testing in public. Something to do with the Guild rebellion? Regardless, it was a glimpse inside th
e chapterhouse walls he’d never expected to see. This sect of zealots and their archaic rites, their devotion to gods that had never once made themselves known to Yoshi or his kin.

  Madmen …

  The crowd pressed in, all eager to catch a glimpse. The Purifier with his vial of blood was speaking some kind of incantation. Yoshi heard snatches from the Book of Ten Thousand Days, invocations of the Maker God. And finally, the Purifier slid back a panel in one of the iron boxes and, upending the black vial, dripped the blood inside.

  A hush fell over the Square, broken only by the whispering rain. A shot of thunder rolled across the clouds. Onlookers blinked, mumbling disappointment, the merchant who’d leveled accusation looking distinctly uncomfortable. Yoshi scowled. What the hells were they expecting? Lord Izanagi to descend from the heavens to waggle his divine finger at this poor bastard? A choir of oni to rise from Yomi and howl the—

  White noise.

  An inversion of sound, as if his skull had been turned inside out.

  Yoshi put his hands to his ears, found his shuriken wound bleeding anew. He felt as if someone had driven a fist into his stomach, tasted ash on the back of his tongue.

  The iron box on the bench trembled, rattling on the table’s surface, three hundred beats per minute. And with an utterance that was not so much a sound as an absence of it, the rivets popped and the sides buckled and the box twisted upon itself as if some invisible giant had clutched it in one mighty fist and squeezed.

  Thin white smoke issued from cracks in the metal. Something black leaked from sundered seams. And though it was mad, Yoshi swore he could smell sweetness. A breath of Iishi wind, crisp with the scent of green and good, before the stench of exhaust fumes and ashes filled his nose and throat again, bringing stinging tears to his eyes.