Stormdancer

  “Before he turned his feet here, perhaps he should have washed them.”

  Yukiko giggled.

  “Naomi, please…” Masaru said.

  “Mother’s right,” Yukiko nodded. “It smells here.”

  “You’ll get used to it, Ichigo.” Masaru pinched her toes, eliciting a yelp.

  The motor-rickshaw waited for them, strange men with growling swords ushering them inside. They rode through the crowded streets and Yukiko pressed her nose to the pockmarked glass, watching the people drift by, wave after wave of seething flesh. The giant samurai in their clanking armor, the grubby children fighting in the gutters, the sararīmen and neo-chōnin, peddlers and beggars. And such a noise! Noise like she’d never heard, near deafening compared to their little bamboo valley, breeze whispering through the stalks in breaths a lifetime wide.

  She wished Satoru could see it all.

  Further up the Palace Way, an impossible cluster of towers and buildings beckoned, tiger flags waving in the toxic wind, daubed in red and gold, bigger than any building she had ever seen.

  “Who lives there, father?”

  “That is the Shōgun’s palace. We will visit it often, if we decide to stay. Would you like that?”

  Yukiko looked uncertain.

  “Can we fish there? Are there butterflies?”

  “No,” her mother said, staring at her father. “There are no butterflies here, Yukiko. No birds. No flowers either.”

  “What is that?” the girl cried, pressing against the window. Beyond the glass, a strange figure was clomping through the crowd, clad in chattering brass, all cogs and wheels and spinning teeth. Its head looked like the fighting mantis that used to clash across the bamboo forest in spring. Its eyes were red as blood, glittering in the muted sun.

  Her mother had answered softly, for her ears only.

  “That is your enemy.”

  * * *

  “Impure.”

  Yukiko whispered the word, watching the Iishi crags grow smaller and smaller, tiny lightning flashing among the now-distant storms. It was such a simple thing; two syllables, the press of her lips together, one on another, tongue rolling upon her teeth. She breathed it again, as if savoring the shape. Tasting it.

  “Impure.”

  It was a word their mother had taught them, her and Satoru, sitting by the fireside late one night and swimming in their hound’s mind. She told the twins not all people had the Kenning; that there were some who could never know an animal’s thoughts or feelings, who were locked in the prison of simple sight, sound and smell.

  “And they are jealous,” she’d warned. “So you must never tell another of the gift, not unless you trust them with your life. For if the Guild discover it, they will take it from you.”

  The twins had nodded then, pretended to understand. Yukiko could remember those words like they were yesterday.

  “If she could see me now,” she sighed.

  She stood at the carven bow of the Guild ship Resplendent Glory, sun on her goggles, hair streaming in the wind. The whirr and clank of atmos-suits and mechabacii was a constant hum, an itch between her shoulders that she couldn’t scratch. The sound of metal boots and engines. Insectoid clicking. Grease and transmission fluid.

  Chi.

  Buruu stood beside her, glaring at any Guildsman or cloudwalker who drifted too close. The ship bristled with cannon and shuriken-throwers; the crewmen who manned it were all armed. A full platoon of marines in Guild colors drifted about the deck; mercenary soldiers in the employ of the Lotusmen. They eyed the arashitora warily from behind face-length breathers and grubby panes of glass. The Glory was a warship of the “ironclad” class; slow-moving, bullet-shaped, plated with metal the color of rust. The soldiers aboard had trekked north in response to the distress call of Kin’s sundered suit, spoiling for a fight. The marines had been surprised when they’d stumbled across the girl and her thunder tiger, dragging the unconscious, naked flesh of a Guildsman behind them, just two miles from where they’d found his ruined skin. In truth, they had expected to find nothing but a corpse.

  Instead, they had found the impossible.

  The storm had calmed as the ironclad lifted off from the rock pool, almost as if Susano-ō wanted to be rid of them, bidding them to hurry away from the Iishi and back to their filthy scab. The ship trekked south, retching black fumes onto the mountains silhouetted at its back, dark clouds drifting among snow-capped peaks. Buruu kept his gaze pressed forward, but Yukiko knew he wanted nothing more than to look behind them and stare at the storm. To close his eyes and remember the wind rushing beneath his wings, the lightning playing in his feathers.

  Soon.

  She ran her hands across his shoulders, fingers entwined in his fur.

  Soon, Buruu.

  Daichi had watched them leave the Kagé stronghold, Kaori by his side. Yukiko had looked back at the village as they climbed out of the valley, just shadows now among the treetops, hung thick with wisteria perfume. She wondered if she would ever return. It had felt as if she were leaving home all over again, nine years old, packing her bags to depart for Kigen. Her mother had refused to cry or bid their house farewell, her mind already made up that she would hate the city, that they would return once she had begged the Shōgun’s pardon.

  Yukiko blinked away the tears, tried to smother them with rage.

  She was pregnant.

  She gritted her teeth, clenched her fists tight. She must be stone. Unfeeling. Unblinking. They must not see. They must not guess. She must wear the mask, the triumphant daughter of the Black Fox returning from the wilds with a legend by her side, delivering unto the Shōgun his glittering prize. And when he leaned close, guard down, offering her the world as her reward, she would take it. His life. Cut from his chest, beating in the palm of her hand, blood on her face and on her tongue.

  She knew what she had to do. But try as she might, again and again, she felt the sorrow swell up past the rage, drowning the spark of anger inside. She felt weak and frail: a tiny girl inside the gears of a great, crushing machine, oiled to murderous precision with the blood of innocent women and children.

  Women. And children.

  She was pregnant, Buruu. I might have had a baby sister. Or another brother.

  She felt steel in him, folded and sharp, light rippling across the surface and glinting on his edge. He flooded her with it, tempered and hard, a resolve forged in lightning and thunder and cooled by the pounding rain. He was strong. So they were strong.

  I AM YOUR BROTHER NOW.

  * * *

  On the evening of the third day, a Lotusman approached the bow with halting steps, the flat black barrel of a Sendoku shuriken-thrower clasped in its gauntlets. Buruu turned and stared, his subsonic growl making the plates of the Guildsman’s suit chatter and squeal against each other. His claws dug into the deck as if it were butter. The Lotusman stopped a good ten feet away and cleared its throat.

  “Kitsune Yukiko.” The voice sounded like a dying lotusfly. “The Artificer you rescued is awake. He requests your presence.”

  Yukiko eyed the Lotusman’s weapon, running her hand down Buruu’s cheek.

  I will call if I need you.

  AS YOU WISH.

  “Lead on, sama,” she said.

  The air below deck was rank with chi, the sweat of marines, the vague cabbage stink of the Guildsmen’s “nutrients.” She tied her kerchief around her mouth, fighting the familiar nausea. The Lotusman led her down a long hallway pocked with doors, into what she presumed was an infirmary.

  The light was low, tungsten buzzing inside amber housings above her head, the faint rumble of the engines pitching a tent behind her eyes and helping to stoke her growing headache. A long cot stretched along her right-hand side, racks of strange lead-gray apparatus lining the walls. Gauges and dials and lengths of pipe snaking down the wood and into the flesh of the figure on the cot. There was a sheet of opaque gauze draped over the bed like a mosquito net; the figure behind it was only a sil
houette swathed in what she presumed must be bandages. The stink of antiseptic hung in the air like smoke.

  The figure shifted as she entered, making the pipes and cables plugged into his flesh quiver obscenely; the shadows of metal serpents writhing on the gauze.

  “Kitsune Yukiko.” Formal tone, his voice stronger than it had been since the accident. She couldn’t see the face, but she recognized Kin nonetheless. “Thank you for coming.”

  “How do you feel?” Yukiko kept her voice neutral, conscious of the Lotusman and its Sendoku hovering by her side.

  “They tell me the fever has broken. The infection is not bad. It is a good thing the antibiotics in my pack lasted as long as they did.”

  “… Hai. It is.”

  “I wanted to thank you.” She could almost feel his stare through the curtain between them. “For keeping me safe. Wandering alone in the wilderness all that time could not have been easy. I am indebted to you.”

  Kin had tilted his head slightly when he said the word “alone,” a subtle underscoring for her eyes only. Yukiko’s glance flickered to the Lotusman beside her.

  She nodded, “Think nothing of it, Guildsman.” Cold. Distant. A good ruse.

  She covered her fist with her palm and gave a small bow. Turning to leave, she refused to spare another passing glance for Kin. Better for the Guild to think they were simple strangers. Less trouble for him. Less trouble for her.

  “Kitsune Yukiko.” The metallic rasp of the Lotusman’s voice pulled her up short at the doorway.

  “Hai?” She glanced at it over her shoulder.

  “The Kyodai also wishes to speak to you.”

  “What is a Kyodai?”

  “The rank and file of the Guild are called ‘Shatei,’” Kin explained. “Little brothers. The ones who look after us are ‘Kyodai.’ Big brothers.”

  Yukiko looked at the Lotusman in its suit, those cold eyes of impassive glass.

  “What does it want to speak to me for?”

  “It was not my place to ask.” The Lotusman turned, walked out into the corridor. It motioned to the door at the end of the hallway. “Come.”

  Kin’s voice was a whisper, so low she could barely hear it.

  “Be careful, Yukiko-chan.”

  Yukiko checked the tantō in her obi, then walked from the room.

  * * *

  The Kyodai’s quarters were opulent, trimmed in brass and stained teak. A small crystal chandelier in the ceiling swayed with the ship’s motion. Maps covered the walls: countries she had never seen, studded with small red pins and long arcs of black. A thick carpet woven with intricate designs lay on the floor, and Yukiko kept her eyes fixed on it as she entered the cabin. The weave pictured a multitude of arashitora silhouettes, solid black against a backdrop of pale blue. Shadows moved beneath the swinging bulbs, reaching out across the floor toward her.

  “Kitsune Yukiko,” said a voice, thick and buzzing.

  Yukiko glanced up to the squat figure behind the low table. The Kyodai was fully suited, bloated belly sheathed in yards of glittering metal, fat fingers encased in elaborate gauntlets. If nothing else, the trim of the skin marked it as a senior Guild member. Extravagant gothic flourishes decorated its spaulders and cuirass, scrolled around the faceted, glowing eyes. Breath hissed through the filters on its back, punctuated by the occasional burst of chi exhaust. A stubby matt-black iron-thrower lurked in a holster on its belt.

  “Guildsman,” she answered, eyes returning to the floor. She did not kneel.

  “Leave us,” the Kyodai ordered.

  The Guildsman at Yukiko’s side touched two fingers to its forehead, rasped, “The lotus must bloom,” and clanked out the door.

  “Do you like it?”

  Yukiko glanced up at the Kyodai. It nodded to the carpet beneath her feet.

  “Very pretty, sama.” She used the term of respect, hoping to impress.

  “Morcheban,” the Guildsman mused. “Taken from a gaijin castle last summer; spoils of the glorious war. It seems some of the barbarian aristocracy have a fondness for Shiman folklore.”

  Yukiko couldn’t tell beneath the helmet, but she thought the Guildsman might be smiling. She found the smooth insectoid lines and empty, glowing eyes of its mask unsettling, so she turned her gaze earthward and remained mute.

  “I am Kyodai of this vessel. You may call me Nao. You are Kitsune Yukiko, daughter of Kitsune Masaru, the Black Fox of Shima.”

  “Hai, sama.”

  “It would trouble you, then, to learn that your father is in prison.”

  Yukiko glanced up to the impassive mask.

  “For what?”

  “Failing Yoritomo-no-miya.” A lazy shrug. “Be thankful he is not executed as Captain Yamagata was.”

  “My father didn’t fail.” She tried to keep the anger from her voice. She remembered Yamagata’s kindness, his strong hands on the Child’s wheel as the storm drove them toward the jagged rocks. “Nobody on that trip failed. We captured the impossible.”

  “And then let it escape.” The Guildsman drummed heavy fingers across the table, leaving shallow impressions in the wood. “But it would seem the daughter succeeded where the father did not. No mean feat for one so young, to tame a beast such as that. I am wondering how you managed it.”

  “Its spirit was broken after my father clipped its wings, sama.” She shrugged, tried to keep her voice casual. “It is a beast, like any other. I tamed it with a little patience, and the offer of food.”

  “Remarkable.”

  “I have a way with animals, sama.”

  “So it would seem.”

  The Guildsman’s faceted eyes glittered; a trick of the light that nevertheless sent butterflies tumbling across her stomach. She met his featureless stare with mute defiance, refusing to be afraid, to back down or beg. She would not think of the Market Square, of those charred stone pillars coated with ash. She could feel Buruu prowling behind her eyes, seized hold of his anger and held on tight. A long, silent moment passed, Nao’s fingers beating a slow rhythm upon the tabletop. Yukiko kept her breathing steady, felt the comforting weight of the tantō at the small of her back.

  “We have taken the liberty of radioing ahead to inform the Shōgun of your success. He is most anxious to meet his prize. You will tell it to behave, hai?”

  “I cannot tell it to do anything. It’s not a dog.”

  The Guildsman’s disbelief hung almost palpable in the air. “It dotes on you like a loyal hound. Like the pup that bit Lady Aisha, hai?”

  Yukiko swallowed, saying nothing.

  “You have a measure of control over it,” Nao rasped. “Do not deny it.”

  “Only the same that anybody does. The control it allows me to have.”

  “I hope that is enough.” Nao shifted his immense bulk. “For the beast’s sake and yours. It will not take much to convince Yoritomo-no-miya to put you both to the pyre.”

  Yukiko forced her eyes down again, studying the woven patterns beneath her feet. Black wings and claws and tails interwoven in a frozen dance across the long-lost color of the sky; the blessed spirit-beasts that had once been so much a part of this island that even foreign artisans knew their shapes by rote. All of them gone now. Gone because of men like this one, bloated with greed, a pig grown fat on the sweat from poor men’s backs. Gone into the mists of memory, obscured behind a rolling blanket of choking blue-black smoke, like a curtain falling after the last notes of music died.

  She put her hand to her brow, headache pounding inside her skull.

  I am thinking like a Kagé.

  “I will do my best to serve the Shōgun’s wishes.” She kept her voice low and even. “As I have always done. As my father has always done.”

  “Of course you will.” The Guildsman sniffed, waved her away like a troublesome insect. “You may go. Enjoy the rest of the journey. You may visit Kioshi-san if you wish, but you will seek my permission first.”

  They call him by his father’s name.

  Yukiko fro
wned, feigning confusion.

  “Who is Kioshi-san?”

  “Ah.” The Guildsman’s laugh was a short, humorless bark. “You had no chance to learn his name while ripping the skin from his flesh. Kioshi-san is the Artificer you rescued from the crash. I misunderstood. I presumed you two had become … close.”

  “Oh.” Yukiko blinked. “I did not think any of you had names.”

  “We do not.” Nao pointed toward the door. “The lotus must bloom.”

  Yukiko covered her fist and bowed, backing away and slipping out quietly. The Guildsman hovering outside regarded her with those glowing, bloody eyes, clockwork and gears rippling down its chest. She nodded to it, and hurried up the stairs.

  The noise of the mechabacus behind her sounded like a growl.

  25

  A DAUGHTER OF FOXES

  Yukiko had never seen so many people in Docktown before. As the Glory pulled into its berth, she looked over the ship’s railing at a sea of upturned faces, thousands upon thousands, respirators and kerchiefs and bare, filthy flesh, goggles bright, fingers pointing. Humble sararīmen and slick neo-chōnin, filthy karōshimen and filthier beggars, guards, gaijin and geisha. Rumor had obviously spread; half the city had turned out to clap eyes on the legend. The word was a whisper, riding a tide on a multitude of lips, lapping in waves of growing volume until it became a tsunami, an impossible thought given voice and crashing among the dust and cobbles.

  “Arashitora.”

  Buruu poked his head over the railing to glower at the crowd and they burst into thunderous cheers. Startled, the thunder tiger ducked back out of sight, tail between his legs. He shook himself like a wet dog, as if to shake the trepidation away.

  SO MANY. INSECTS, ALL.

  I am with you. I am here.

  I WOULD LEAVE THIS PLACE.

  I know. But we have work to do.

  WHEN IT IS DONE, WE WILL FLY FAR FROM HERE. FAR FROM THIS SCAB AND ITS POISONED SKY. WE WILL DANCE IN THE STORMS, YOU AND I.

  Until then, we must be careful. He must think me a simple girl, you a dumb beast.

  Buruu glanced over the side again, ignoring the crowd’s rapture, glaring at the arriving convoy of low-slung motor-rickshaws. They glittered in the sun like beetle shells, crawling with men and their growling swords, surrounded by a choir of wailing monkey-children. Reeking of wealth, of stinking excess, of blind, mad hubris. He had yet to lay eyes on this Yoritomo-no-miya, and he already despised him.