She had waited until the others ascended before climbing the ladder. Buruu had climbed beside her, bleeding gouges left in his wake, talons and claws sticky with sap. Unable to fit through the door to Daichi’s dwelling, the arashitora crouched on a branch outside, motionless save for the rhythmic sweep of his tail. His tension was palpable, radiant, eyes glittering like blades. Yukiko could feel his pulse, the rhythm of his breathing. Without even being conscious of it, her own heart and lungs fell into pace with his.
She knelt across from the old man, pressed her forehead to the floorboards.
“Daichi-sama.”
“Yukiko-chan.” The old man nodded, covered his fist with his palm. “Friend to arashitora. You honor this humble house with your presence.”
Kaori and the rest of her group knelt in a semi-circle around Daichi, respectfully silent. Yukiko glanced around her: rough furniture, fire pit in the center of the room, crude metal chimney stabbing up through the ceiling. Three closed doors, leading off into different rooms. An old-fashioned katana lay sheathed in a groove on the wall at Daichi’s back, its scabbard exquisitely crafted: black lacquer, golden cranes on the wing. There was another groove beneath it, and Yukiko had no doubt that Kaori’s wakizashi had once sat there, part of the same daishō pair. Only the noble-born were permitted to carry the daishō, the proud symbol of their status among the samurai caste.
He must be ronin.
WHAT IS RONIN?
An ex-samurai. A noble-born warrior without a Lord.
WHY DOES LORD MATTER?
All samurai follow the Code of Bushido. It’s like a religion and a philosophy and a set of laws all mixed together. Loyalty and sacrifice and humility—they live their entire lives by it. But above all, the code demands servitude. Allegiance to a master. If your master dies, or you break your oath, you become ronin. It is a source of shame. A great loss of face.
HE IS OATH-BREAKER, THEN? LIAR?
Yukiko lifted her head from the floor to look for the man’s irezumi, the symbol of his clan inked on his flesh. But his arms were covered with the sleeves of his uwagi, gray cloth running down to his wrists, frayed at the cuffs. He followed her eyeline, something like amusement twinkling in that steel-gray.
“Where are you from, Yukiko-chan?”
“Kigen, Daichi-sama.”
“And you served on the sky-ship that crashed into Kuromeru Peak?”
“Hai,” she nodded, keeping her eyes low.
“Mrmn,” he grunted, running one hand through his mustache. There was something reptilian about the man; something ancient and slow, all muscles and teeth and endless, cold-blooded patience. “You were not aboard the life boat. How did you survive the crash?”
“I set Buruu free from his cage. When he leaped over the railing, I jumped on his back.”
“You flew on an arashitora?”
A faint murmur rippled among the assembled figures. Kaori narrowed her eyes.
“Hai,” Yukiko nodded.
“Aiya.” Daichi shook his head. “One hundred summers could come and go, and we would never hear another tale like that.”
“It was either that or die,” Yukiko shrugged.
“And you killed four oni?”
“Five, Daichi-sama,” said Kaiji. “The northern slopes. Near Black Temple.”
“Mrmn,” he nodded. “Have you heard of the Stormdancers, Yukiko-chan?”
She looked up from the floorboards and met Daichi’s stare. He was older than her father but unmarked by lotus smoke, gaze still sharp, skin clean. His body was hard, lean, calloused fingers and old scars. The katana on the wall behind him was within easy reach of his hand.
“Stories.” Yukiko shook her head. “From childhood. Kitsune no Akira and the Dragon of Forgetting. Kazuhiko the Red and the hundred ronin. Widow’s Bridge, and the doomed charge of Tora Takehiko into Devil Gate.”
“One of my favorites,” Daichi smiled.
“They’re just stories.”
“Some might say,” he nodded. “Tales of halcyon days can serve to promote nationalist pride. The Communications Ministry invokes past glories to inspire new ones among the working class, to wring more sweat from the karōshimen’s backs. To convince more young men to take up arms and spill their heart’s blood beneath the Shōgun’s flag in a war they know nothing about. The Stormdancers have become pulp heroes, serialized on the Guild wireless, their stories drained of all meaning and truth. It is easy to see why you’d think them nothing more than propaganda. Such is the shape of the world in which we live.”
Daichi nodded toward the doorway, in the direction of Buruu.
“Your … friend, you call him? If there were any justice, our kind would have never seen his kind again. But here he is, a miracle in flesh, proof that there is truth even in their lies. And what do they do when they learn one of these creatures still exists?” The old man sighed. “Hunt him down and cripple him like some wretched sparrow in the palace gardens.”
“The Shōgun commanded it.”
“The Shōgun.” Daichi chuckled, amusement spreading like an infection among his cohort. “The Shōgun commands only that which we allow him to.”
“Everyone on these islands owes Yoritomo-no-miya their allegiance.”
Steel-gray eyes glittered.
“Nobody in this room owes Yoritomo a thing, Yukiko-chan.”
“So you are ronin, then?”
“Hai, I am ronin.” Daichi’s smile faded. “Once I served the Shōgun’s house. I wore the ō-yoroi and the golden jin-haori of the Kazumitsu Elite guard. I know Masaru, the Black Fox, who mutilated your friend’s wings. I know Yoritomo, who sits as Shōgun of the Four Thrones and would be my Lord.”
Daichi’s hand moved slowly, rolling up the sleeves of his uwagi. Where there should have been irezumi, there was only a blanket of patchwork scars, stretching from his elbows to his shoulders. The skin was rough and uneven, pale in comparison to the rich tan on his face.
“You burned off your tattoos?” Yukiko frowned.
“I have no zaibatsu. I will suffer no Lord such as Yoritomo. None of us here carries the symbols of slavery any longer. No clan save our own. No masters save ourselves.”
Conscious of the irezumi running down her left arm, Yukiko thanked Kitsune that her uwagi’s sleeves were long enough to cover it. Daichi smiled, as if he knew her thoughts.
“Symbols of slavery?” Yukiko tilted her head.
“When a man’s fate is not his own, when he may die at the behest of a man born luckier or wealthier, when he sweats all his life for scraps from another’s table, then he is in peril.” Daichi’s eyes glittered in the half light. “But when he accepts it in his heart, when he ceases to struggle against that fundamental injustice, then he is a slave.”
Yukiko’s face burned. She was no slave. Her friends, her family, they were all freemen. Who did this man think he was?
“Most men would rather be a slave than an oath-breaker.”
“An oath to a liar is no oath at all,” Daichi growled. “Yoritomo broke his oath to me.”
“How?”
“He demanded what was not his to take.” Daichi’s eyes flickered to his daughter, back to Yukiko. “And when it was denied him, he decided that no other man should possess it either. Nor should they ever want to.”
Yukiko looked at the scar running down Kaori’s face, beauty forever spoiled, feeling sick to her stomach. She nodded. Not in understanding, because nobody who claimed to be human could possibly understand something like that. But she nodded. She knew.
MADNESS.
“So it has always been with the line of Kazumitsu.” Kaori’s voice shook with remembered anger. “What they see they want, and what they cannot possess, they destroy. Look at your friend outside. If not for your Shōgun, he would be free, soaring over the desolation that Yoritomo names ‘Empire’.” She shook her head. “I wonder why he ever came here.”
“Perhaps he was brought here,” Daichi answered, his eyes never leaving Yukiko’s. “
Perhaps you were too.”
* * *
Yukiko stood on a broad footbridge, watching maple leaves spiral toward the ground. She held a wisteria bloom in her hand, fragile as spun sugar, petals shaped like an upturned bowl, white as pure snow. A hush had fallen over the world, a pre-dawn silence that held the night in a fragile embrace, waiting to break in the sunrise with the first birdsong. The horizon was aglow with the promise of impending daylight.
Though she’d suppressed her yawns as long as she was able, Daichi had realized Yukiko was tired. He told her that Kin was being cared for, that she should rest, but she knew it was only a matter of time before someone discovered the bayonet fixtures in his flesh. Yukiko had no idea how she was going to explain them.
She and Buruu were taken to an empty dwelling high in the branches of an old oak. The tree was overgrown with wisteria vines, twisting up from the forest floor in thick, fragrant growths. Buruu had stretched out on a branch shaped like a cupped palm as she began pacing across the footbridge, too restless to sleep.
She let go of the flower, watched it spiral into the drop below her feet. Staring down through the camouflage nets, she blinked in wonder at it all: the squat houses covered in creepers and wrapped in twisted branches, the bridges, dwellings and storerooms blending in seamlessly with the greenery around them, mere shadows in the canopy to anyone looking up from below. A hundred men would have to slave for a decade to build a place like this. The will it must have taken to craft it out of nothing made her marvel.
These people are fanatics.
Buruu opened one eye, blinked sleepily.
YOU SHOULD REST.
I don’t trust them. What are they doing here?
LIVING FREE. AWAY FROM YOUR SCABS AND DESPOILER LORD. ADMIRABLE.
There is hatred in their eyes. Darkness. I can feel it. They are not just men who seek freedom from the Shōgun’s rule. There is more to it than that.
SLEEP. I WILL WATCH IF YOU FEAR.
Yukiko heard soft footsteps. She turned and saw Kaori approaching across the bridge, surefooted, hair rippling in dark, velvet waves. The diagonal fringe hung over her face, obscuring much of the scar, one eye visible between twin curtains of black. She stopped beside Yukiko, leaned against the railing and stared out into the whispering gloom.
“You should sleep.” Kaori’s voice was as soft as smoke. “You look exhausted.”
“Soon.”
“Rumors are already spreading among the people here.” Kaori glanced at her sidelong. “The girl who rides the thunder tiger. Slayer of half a dozen oni. I fear you will be inundated with attention tomorrow. You should rest while you can.”
“It wasn’t half a dozen. It was only five.”
MUST HAVE BEEN DIFFICULT. LITTLE THING LIKE YOU ENDING FIVE PIT DEMONS ALL ALONE.
Yukiko made a face.
“Buruu did most of the work, anyway.”
SHOULD THINK SO …
“The oni will be angered,” Kaori sighed. “The loss of so many of their number…”
Yukiko stayed silent, staring off into the dark. There was something wrong with all of this; the simple folk with warriors’ weapons, the burned tattoos. Suspicion gnawed at her insides, the feeling of being constantly watched prickling the back of her neck.
“Your friend is running a fever.” Kaori stood on tiptoe and peered over the railing, waves of raven hair falling about her face. “We have given him antibiotics, something to help ease the pain.”
“And where did you get the medicine?”
Ever so slightly, Kaori narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Well, do you trade for it? You seem intent on keeping this place secret. But unless you’re growing the antibiotics yourselves, I’m guessing someone knows you’re out here.”
Kaori turned toward her, shoulders square. Her face had hardened; a sudden shift to smooth stone. She glared behind her fringe.
“You ask a lot of questions, Yukiko-chan. They can be dangerous things so far from home.”
Buruu growled; a low rumble full of menace. Yukiko met the older woman’s stare coolly.
“There are all sorts of dangerous things around here.”
Kaori’s eyes flickered to Buruu, now rising to his feet. The thunder tiger stared at her the way an avalanche stares at a butterfly.
“As you say.” The woman gave a small bow, palm covering her fist. “Get some sleep. We will talk more in the morning.”
Kaori turned away, her feet making barely a sound, the bridge unmoving beneath her. Yukiko watched until she disappeared among the shadows, eyes narrowed.
I do not like this, Buruu.
20
MYTHOLOGY
Yukiko was awoken late the next day by the arashitora’s voice in her head, warning her of approaching footsteps. She had dreamed of flying above the mountains, high and free, thermals cupping her wings and bidding her higher until the whole world lay on display beneath her claws. She knew it was Buruu’s dream. She wondered if he sometimes dreamed of the boy with the sea-green eyes.
The footsteps belonged to Isao and a girl around Yukiko’s age, who peeked in the door and introduced herself as Eiko in a small, shy voice. Isao had brought Buruu a brace of fresh trout, and the arashitora began tearing the flesh with relish. The boy bid Yukiko good evening and handed her a pair of old polarized goggles, explaining that the sun was still bright enough to burn her eyes if she ventured beyond the forest shade. The glass was scratched, the leather strap so timeworn that it felt like sandpaper under her fingertips.
Eiko offered a bowl of nigirizushi and fresh, fat plums; Yukiko had missed both breakfast and lunch, but it was not yet time for dinner. Giving genuine thanks, she began wolfing down the food, asking Eiko’s background between mouthfuls.
“I have lived here six years,” replied the girl, watching Buruu with unashamed wonder. “My family moved here when we could no longer afford inochi, and our fields began to turn to deadlands without the fertilizer.”
“Why would the Guild let your fields run to ruin?” Yukiko mumbled around a mouthful of plum. “Why charge so much that your family couldn’t afford inochi? That just means less lotus next year.”
“It’s not the Guild, it’s the clan Daimyo,” Isao explained. “Their soldiers run the farmers off the land before the deadening gets too bad. They drain money from the farmers’ pockets by charging land taxes, ensuring the little man hasn’t got enough coin left over to afford fertilizer. Then they kick him off his land under the guise of environmental protectionism: ‘If you can’t afford to preserve the soil, then we will.’ It’s all about consolidation of power. Taking the land away from the common people.”
“But who works the fields once the farmers have been kicked off?”
“Slaves,” Eiko shrugged. “Why do you think the zaibatsu support the war? Most nobles run their fields almost entirely under slave power now. Every shipload of gaijin from the war zone is more cheap labor. Labor you can starve, sweating the skin off their bones until they drop. Then you just buy another shipload with spoils you make from the war. Gaijin aren’t people. What do the Daimyo or noble-born care?”
WHAT IS DAIMYO?
The leaders of the clans. Powerful military Lords.
LIKE SHŌGUN.
Well, the Tiger Daimyo also claims the title of Shōgun. The other three Daimyo—Fox, Dragon and Phoenix—all swear allegiance to him.
“They’ve got bigger problems, anyway,” Isao was saying. “Inochi can only delay soil-death for so long. Covering the earth with that sludge will buy you a handful of years. A decade or two at most. And now land is running out. They’ve razed all the scrubland, ‘reclaimed’ the swamps, clear-felled every forest. We’re standing in the last wilderness left in all Shima. The only reason the shreddermen haven’t leveled it is because of superstition and the fact that some genius discovered it’s more profitable to enslave gaijin instead.” The boy counted off on his fingers. “You get more land to seed overseas, cheap slave labor back ho
me, the market on a war-footing, and an enemy for the common people to hate.” Isao made a face. “The nameless, round-eye barbarian, rather than the barbarian sitting on the country’s throne.”
Yukiko shook her head, thoughts tumbling inside her skull.
They’re speaking sedition. The Iron Samurai would execute their whole family for talking this way back in Kigen.
THIS IS NOT A SCAB.
No. But these are not simple displaced farmer folk either.
When the feast was done, Eiko offered to take Yukiko to the bathhouse, and Isao suggested he should come along. Eiko punched him in the stomach, threatening to cut his privates off, and the boy soon took his leave. With a small smile, the girl produced a bar of soap from within her obi. It smelled of honeysuckle and fresh daisies, and Yukiko closed her eyes, inhaling the fragrance and trying to calculate how long it had been since she’d had a warm bath. Her skin tingled at the thought of it.
“Hai,” she breathed. “Please.”
* * *
The girls walked together across creaking boards and swaying rope bridges, listening to the voice of the wind in the leaves. The thunder tiger padded a safe distance behind them, ropes creaking dangerously under his weight, wings slightly spread in case the bridge beneath him decided to give way. The sun was beginning to set in the west, fingers of burning red piercing the forest canopy, deepening the shadows amidst the treetops. Yukiko found herself astounded at the scale of it all; teahouses and storerooms among the winding branches, sprawling family homes, even a crude village center, fashioned from a broad platform of unfinished cedar wood.
As they drew closer, Yukiko realized some kind of gathering was taking place in the square, and she stopped, uncertain, reaching out with nervous fingers toward Buruu. With a smile, Eiko took hold of her hand and led her toward the group.
Two dozen children were sitting in a wide semi-circle, scattered across the landing in the long, muted light of the afternoon sun. Daichi was perched on a rough wooden stool at their center, loose, worn cotton draped about his body, a ceramic cup full of clear water clutched in one hand. His sword was tucked into his obi, his other hand on the hilt, all calluses and scarred knuckles. He leaned closer, one elbow on his knee, and looked each child in the eye.