Stormdancer (26 page)

once at Yukiko with dark, liquid eyes. She heard Michi behind her, whispering something under her breath. A prayer, maybe.
“Leave us,” said Aisha, an iron note of command in her voice. As one, the
serving girls stood and fled the room, tiny steps scurrying across the wicker
matting.
Yukiko bowed her head, uncertainty getting the best of her anger. This aggression, this impatience; it wasn’t like her. She was normally level-headed,
grown pragmatic beyond her years in the shadow of her father’s addictions. It
was almost as if . . .
Of course.
Buruu. Once so primal. Impulsive and feral. But now he showed capacity
for restraint, patience, complex thought, reason overcoming his bestial nature. Their shared dreams. Shared feelings. The bond between them growing
by the day.
He’s becoming more like me.
“I am sorry, Lady,” she murmured. “I beg your forgiveness.”
And I’m becoming more like him.
Aisha put her cup down on the table carefully, her hand steady. “What do you want, Kitsune Yukiko?”
Yukiko’s gaze flickered up to the Lady’s face. She didn’t seem angry, or offended. Aisha glanced up and down Yukiko’s body, as if taking her measure
inside her head. Her eyes glittered with a fierce intelligence, a calculating precise cunning that matched the unveiled authority in her voice. The shamisen
music began playing again from the room next door, a smoke- screen over their
conversation behind the paper-thin walls. Yukiko began to suspect that there
was more to this woman than pretty dresses and tea ceremonies. “What do I want?”
“Hai,” said Aisha. “What is it that you wish to achieve here in Kigen?” Yukiko blinked, said nothing.
“You may speak freely.”
“Well.” Yukiko licked carefully at her bottom lip. “First of all, I want my
father out of prison.”
“And you believe that insulting me is the best way to achieve this?” “N-no,” she murmured. “I am sorry, La—”
“Do not apologize for your mistakes,” Aisha interrupted. “Learn from them.” “I don’t—”
“Women in this city, on this island, we do not seem like we are important.
We do not lead armies. We do not own lands, nor fight in wars. Men consider
us nothing more than pretty distractions. Do not for a second believe that this
means we are powerless. Never underestimate a woman’s power over men, Kitsune Yukiko.”
“No, Lady.”
“You are young, have not been educated in courtly ways, instead growing
up wild with that drug-addled father of yours. This is a disadvantage you must
learn to overcome quickly. For believe me when I say that, second only to myself, you are currently the most powerful woman in all of Shima.” “What?”
“Yoritomo needs you, Yukiko.” Aisha held her pinned in that dark, glittering
stare. “I know what you are, yōkai-kin. The whole court knows. The entire city
has heard your story by now. Street minstrels sit on the corners, watch their offering cups fill with kouka as they play songs about the brave ‘Arashi-no-ko,’
who slew a dozen oni and tamed the mighty thunder tiger. Did you know that
the Guild has already sent an emissary demanding you be put to the pyre?” Yukiko felt her gut lurch with fear as she mumbled a negative. “Yoritomo laughed in his face. Can you imagine? The Shateigashira himself, the Guild made flesh in this city. And Yoritomo laughed at him.” Aisha
shook her head. “My brother thinks of nothing but his dream. Of riding that
arashitora to a final victory over the gaijin that a dozen different generals under the command of our father failed to bring. A triumph the historians will
tell of for generations. And you can give that to him, Yukiko-chan. Only you.” Aisha picked up her cup and sipped the tea.
“Why do you think I brought you here today? Made you wear that dress?” “. . . I do not know, Lady.”
“You are not just young, you are beautiful. And now half the men in this
palace know it, and have told the remaining half what a prize you are. Men are
idiots. They think with their loins, not their heads. Beauty is a weapon, sharp
as any chainkatana. Men will do almost anything to possess it, if only for a
second. In the face of that desire, a girl blushes and turns her gaze to the floor.
A woman plays it like a shamisen.” Aisha gestured to the musicians next door.
“And she gets her way.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
Aisha smiled. “Because you have a good heart. A kind spirit and a brave
soul. Most people in this palace have none of these things. I know what has
been done to you. You and your family. I want to see you get what you want,
Yukiko-chan. And I want to see others here get what they deserve.” Aisha drained the last of her tea, placed the cup down, a faint stripe of
blood-red paint left behind on the glaze.
“I received a message from a dear friend today. One I have not seen in many
years. She told me her father is well. She wanted me to pass on her regards to
you.”
“To me?”
“Hai.”
Aisha reached into the sleeve of her robe, placed something on the table
between them. Unfurling her fan respirator, she fluttered it in front of her
face. The eyes floating above it were diamond hard.
Yukiko looked down to the white shape, stark against stained teak. Fragile
as spun sugar, petals shaped like an upturned bowl. Her heart thundered as she
inhaled the scent, the sweet perfume of the Iishi.
It was a wisteria bloom.

The arashitora tossed his head and steered himself away from the obstacle course again, jerking the reins from Yukiko’s hand. The circuit ran endlessly around the iron spike in the center of the arena; a ring of packing crates, bales of dirty yellow straw, and crumbling statues of bent, wizened men. Losing her grip with her thighs, Yukiko slid off the thunder tiger’s neck and tumbled to the ground, landing in a painful heap on her rump.

The beast growled at her and tossed his head again, clawing at the steelshod bridle around his beak. His talons rasped across the metal weave, giving birth to tiny sparks.

“If you break another one, you get no dinner tonight,” she warned him. A roar of defiance.
“Maybe he’s had enough for one day,” Hiro ventured.
The lone Iron Samurai sat in the benches above their heads; a spectator to

the ongoing farce that was the arashitora’s “training.” Several bushimen were scattered among the seats and along the arena walls, laughing in appreciation whenever Buruu misbehaved. To say that the beast’s education was going badly was an understatement.

“Maybe he’s just too stupid,” called one. “No wonder the damn things died out.”
FIVE MINUTES ALONE. WE WILL SEE WHO IS STUPID, INSECT.
Peace, brother. You’re doing so well.
Yukiko stood up slowly, wincing, and made a show of rubbing her behind where she’d fallen on it. She stretched to touch her toes, feigning a cramp in her lower back, sensing the eyes of the bushimen on her body. Hungry stares and dry mouths.
Aisha was right. These men are fools, suspecting nothing.
THIS CHARADE GROWS TIRESOME.
We’ll have time for pride when we’re far away from here. Until then, we both have to swallow it. For my father’s sake as well as our own.
THIS HARNESS ITCHES.
It had been on the second day, after Buruu bucked her off with his wings for the fifth time that afternoon, that Yukiko suggested some kind of device to strap them down. She drew a rough sketch and had Hiro take it to the Shōgun.
The Guild Artificers had complied sluggishly with Yoritomo’s request, delivering the harness five days later. Thick straps of padded rubber and flexible iron mesh now bound Buruu’s pinions to his flanks. Ostensibly, the harness prevented him from trying to take flight and giving Yukiko a fresh set of bruises. In reality, it also did a fine job of concealing the new feathers sprouting along Buruu’s wings, and catching the old feathers as they moulted away.
Yukiko had found a small box tucked inside the harness on the day it was delivered, her name written on top in precise, beautiful kanji. Inside she found a small mechanical arashitora, sculpted out of paper and brass, no bigger than the palm of her hand. She wound the tiny spring and set it on the floor, watching the wings become a blur, lifting the toy off the ground in short, whirring bounds.
At the bottom of the box, she found a note.
“Grounded in Kigen until my burns heal. Was sorry to hear about your father and Yamagata. I miss you.—Kin.”
She had scanned the note, hidden it inside her obi. Later that night, she tore the message into tiny pieces and scattered it to the wind. She hadn’t the heart to throw away the tiny arashitora. In all the noise and motion of the past few days, she had almost forgotten about Kin, and she was surprised at how relieved the knowledge that he was still living and breathing made her feel. A week spent under the watchful eyes of the bushimen and Lord Hiro was starting to fray her nerves.
I AM LOSING ANOTHER FEATHER. FOURTH PRIMARY. LEFT WING. FIRST PRIMARIES ARE GROWING IN.
How long until you can fly?
DAYS. PERHAPS A WEEK.
Then we’d best start work on freeing my father.
HOW DO YOU PROPOSE WE DO THAT?
We don’t.
THEN HOW . . .
We get the Kagé to do it.
YOU WERE WISE NOT TO KILL DAICHI. DID YOU SUSPECT KAORI KNEW AISHA?
Gods, no. They said that they had people closer to Yoritomo than he could ever dream, but I had no idea it would be his own sister.
PERHAPS YOU HOPED IT WOULD BE SOMEONE DIFFERENT?
I don’t know what you mean.
INDEED.
Anyway, it makes no difference. I didn’t spare Daichi because I thought it would be to our advantage. I spared him because it was the right thing to do. If it were right of me to blame him for obeying Yoritomo’s command, then it would be right of you to hate my father for what he did to your wings. And it’s not.
FEATHERS GROW BACK. MOTHERS DO NOT. AND I DO HATE HIM.
Daichi wasn’t the one who took my mother away. And my father isn’t the reason you’re chained here. You and I both know that. You’re going to have to forgive him one day, Buruu.
. . .
Buruu made no reply.
“I think we should take a break,” Yukiko sighed, rubbing her rear again. She walked across the arena floor, stepped through the gate leading out of the pit. Securing the exit behind her with two iron bolts, she started trudging up the stone stairs toward ground level.
“I am sure Lord Hiro is very sorry to hear there will be no more stretching today.” Michi handed her a pitcher of water and a towel. The girl shot a stern glance up at the Iron Samurai in the seats. Hiro was looking intently at his gauntlets, pretending not to have heard. Wiping the sweat from her eyes, Yukiko gave the girl a broad smile.
Aisha had commanded Michi to wait on Yukiko after the tea ceremony. The girl was to ensure Yukiko conducted herself as a lady of the court should, but in secret she also carried messages back and forth between the conspirators. Michi had a black sense of humor and an infectious laugh, and her insight into courtly affairs was as sharp as razors. Against her better judgment, Yukiko found herself liking the girl.
“Can you ask Lady Aisha if she will have tea tonight?”
“Hai.” Michi bowed at the knees. “I will prepare a cushion for your shadow to kneel on in the hallway.”
Casting a mock frown in the samurai’s direction, she tiptoed off to the motorrickshaw waiting outside. Yukiko waited until she had gone, then climbed the stairs and sat down on the same bench as Hiro, keeping a respectable distance away. She pulled off her goggles and kerchief, wiped the sweat from the back of her neck and drank deeply from the water pitcher.
“Training is taking longer than I thought,” she sighed.
“You have many months until he is ready to fly.” Hiro glanced at her, careful not to stare. “And you are making progress. Yoritomo-no-miya is pleased at our reports so far.”
“You report on me?”
“The Shōgun commands it.” Pistons hissed as Hiro shrugged.
“But you’re saying nice things?” She looked at him sidelong, risked a teasing smile.
“I could never say otherwise.”
“Even about a commoner like me?”
“There is nothing at all common about you, daughter of foxes.” He looked at her then, as if offended by the suggestion. He didn’t look away. “Or should I start calling you Arashi-no-ko?”
She turned to face him, and they stared at each other for what seemed like an age, poisoned wind wailing around the arena in words she could almost understand. Even at a distance, Yukiko could see her reflection in his irises, curved and splintered on that field of sea-green. His skin was statue- smooth, turned to copper in the light of a strangled sun, lips parted slightly to breathe. Time stumbled, sand slipping through the hourglass one tiny grain at a time, falling earthward with that same gravity that dragged her forward, inching closer, pulse pounding in her ears.
She found herself wishing they were somewhere else. Somewhere private.
Anywhere but this.
“Come on,” she finally sighed. “We should be getting back.”

“Did he try to kiss you?”
“No.”
“Did you try to kiss him?”
“Of course not, Michi!”
Yukiko scowled at the maidservant in the looking glass, trying to keep

the flush from her cheeks. The girl was up to her elbows in Yukiko’s hair, drawing the thick coils back into an elaborate golden headpiece studded with tassels and pins and tiny prowling tigers. Michi raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

“He’s probably out there in the hallway right now, composing bad poetry in his head.”
Michi cleared her throat, her voice taking on a breathless lilt:

“Pale Fox’s Daughter,
Her cherry lips haunt my dreams. Something, something, breasts . . .”

“Don’t you think I’ve got more important things to worry about than Lord Hiro?” Yukiko’s hiss cut Michi’s laughter in half. “Don’t you think I should be avoiding undue attention?”

“You already have undue attention.” Michi wiped the grin from her face, shrugged again. “It can hardly be avoided, so use it to your advantage. A man will turn a blind eye to the misbehavior of his lover more readily than that of his prisoner.”

Michi stared at Yukiko as if she had asked the color of the sky. “There is nothing I would not do to free this land from the yoke of the Shōgunate.”
“Why?” Yukiko watched her in the mirror. “What did they do to you?”
“What makes you think they did anything to me?” She returned to arranging Yukiko’s hair, deft fingers wrapped in ribbons of gleaming black.
“Because people don’t just wake up one day and decide to . . .” Yukiko caught herself, lowered her voice again, “. . . to do what we’re going to do.”
“And what is that?”
“I’m not in the mood for games. What did they do to you, Michi?”
The girl paused, meeting Yukiko’s stare in the mirror. All trace of amusement was gone now, and it seemed that a shadow passed over her eyes. When she spoke, the facade of the impetuous, lively young girl Yukiko had spent the last few days with fell away, and for just a fraction of a second she caught a glimpse of the rage that lurked beneath that pretty mask.
“Daiyakawa,” Michi said.
“What about it?”
“I was born there. I was six years old when the riot happened. The prefect. The one they forced to commit seppuku . . .”
“You knew him?”
A nod.
“My uncle.”
“Then the children they killed . . .”
“My cousins.” She swallowed. “Right in front of me.”
“Gods . . .”
“My family gave their lives in resis tance against the Kazumitsu Shōgunate.” A black light burned in her eyes, her skin deathly pale. “So, yes, I would give my body. My final drop of blood. The last breath in my lungs to see this country freed.”
“What about Aisha?” Yukiko tilted her head, eyes a fraction narrower.
“What about her?”
“What does she have to gain from any of this? Why does she care? It can’t just be because of Kaori’s face.”
“You dishonor her, Yukiko-chan.” There was steel in Michi’s voice. “She is stronger than you or I could ever dream.”
“Is she? If Yoritomo dies, she inherits the throne, right?”
“You do not know what you are talking about.”
“Then teach me. What is she risking, exactly?”
A long moment of silence passed, each of them staring at the other’s reflection. The only sound was the creak of the ceiling fans, the distant murmur of the city beyond high, glass-topped walls. Yukiko was beginning to think she’d pushed Michi too far when, at last, the girl began to speak.
“Think on this.” Michi began to arrange Yukiko’s hair again, her hands a touch less gentle than before. “Your mother. My uncle. The Shōgun and the Guild have bled us. Our resolve is built on scar tissue. It is easy to rail against injustice when the authorities have given you a reason to hate them. What have they given Aisha?”
Yukiko shrugged, said nothing.
“Everything she could ever ask for,” Michi continued. “Anything she could dream. If she wished, she could live her entire life inside these walls, never touched by the growing rot beyond. She chose to open her eyes. She chose to refuse all of this, to risk everything they have given her, everything she could ever be. The Dynasty, the Guild, they’ve never taken anything from her. And still she wants to tear them down. Why?”
“I don’t know why.”
Yukiko stared long and hard at the girl’s reflection, as if seeing her for the first time. She realized that the Michi she knew was simply a costume, a role adopted for the sake of ruthless expediency. She began to feel distinctly out of her depth, sinking to the eyes in black, cloudy water, reaching out instinctively for Buruu’s warmth in the distance. She began to understand the scale of it all, the machine she was pitting herself against, the fact that she really knew nothing about the allies she had thrown in with.
Buruu. Her father. Her own life.
A lot to risk in the hands of strangers.
Michi watched her carefully, speaking as if reading her thoughts.
“I asked Aisha the same thing once. Why she risked all, and where she found the will to do it. She said that from the outside it seems an enormous thing, for anyone unscarred to choose to resist. To look around at the smiling faces of their peers, and step willingly outside the warmth of that contented little circle. She said that every part of her being rebelled against the notion at first. Because there is something in us that loves the momentum of the mob, Yukiko-chan. The comfort of swimming in the current with our fellows. Something in all of us wants to belong.”
She was staring at Yukiko’s reflection, but her eyes seemed focused at some distant point inside the glass.
“Yet as sunset approaches, all anyone needs do is look ahead and see where this current will lead us. To realize that if we do not stop and swim against the stream, eventually we will find the precipice over which it flows. We all of us know it. As surely as we know the sound of our own voices. We see it when we look in the mirror. We hear it when we wake in the long, still hours of the night. A voice that tells us something is deeply, horribly wrong with this world that we have made.” Michi’s voice became a whisper. “Aisha said it became a simple thing after that. As simple as speaking. As mustering the will to say one tiny little word.”
“What word?” Yukiko whispered too, without quite knowing why.
Michi breathed, a syllable as tiny and fragile as glass.
“No.”

The sun had slipped below the horizon, bringing a cool dusk. The whispering sea breeze was a mixed blessing; banishing the scorching heat, but blowing in the suffocating stink of Kigen Bay. The summer’s worst was over, and autumn would soon be approaching on dry, yellow feet. Yukiko wondered if she would be back in the Iishi by then, to watch the trees shed their green dresses. She hadn’t seen the shades of the world turn to rust since she was a little girl.