Stormdancer (30 page)

Yukiko kept her voice low, her eyes scanning the arena, listening for the sounds of the bushimen patrols. She had slipped from her bedroom as soon as the sun set, crawled through the roof and stolen out over the garden wall. From the cover of a nearby squeezeway, she’d watched the soldiers as they circled the periphery of the arena; two pairs marching clockwise and counter-clockwise, walking through the archways and patrolling the inner walls every second circuit. Each trip around the circumference took the men almost ten minutes. She had a little under seven left before she’d have to slip back into the shadows. She felt nervous and exposed on the broad expanse of the arena floor, crouching low beside Buruu’s forelegs, one hand on his chest. She needed to get back to the palace before anyone missed her.

The Artificer was bent over Buruu’s wing, testing a series of metal cuffs around the alula and marginal coverts, assessing length and breadth with a small, clicking measure-reel. The mechabacus on his chest was a constant, clattering hum, singing an equation of sedition.

“Two days,” Kin replied, swapping one cuff for another. “It will be ready.” “It needs to be, Kin-san. The whole city will be at the bicentennial. Almost every bushiman in the palace will be part of the parade. Iron Samurai too. The prison will be almost empty, and all eyes will be on the sky. We get one chance at this.”
“I will play my part.”
DO YOU TRUST HIM?
Do I have a choice?
FROM THE FIRST TIME YOU MET, HE BEGAN LYING TO YOU. FACE HIDDEN BEHIND HIS MASK, THINKING THE WORLD DOES NOT SEE THE POISON.
He’s not like the rest of them.
THEY ARE ALL THE SAME.
She reached up to Buruu’s neck, dragged her fingernails between the sleek feathers under his chin. His purr was a tiny earthquake, rumbling deep inside her chest.
“I want to thank you, Kin-san,” Yukiko said, searching the featureless, brass mask. “You are risking so much for us. I’m not sure I know why.”
“Do you not?” A rasping buzz from within his helmet. “Can you not guess?”
She licked her lips and stared at the floor.
HE WANTS YOU. THAT IS WHY HE HELPS US. NO OTHER REASON.
“Kin, I—”
He held up his hand, thick leather and heavy brass, clockwork and spinning gears. Yukiko could see herself reflected in that single bloody eye, saw herself for the liar she’d become. She knew Kin was in love with her. But she was afraid that if she told him how she felt, he’d abandon her, leave Buruu to die in here. And she needed his help.
Was that something she could forgive herself for? Lying for the sake of a greater good? Deceiving this boy so her best friend would be spared his torment, her father could be free of his prison? Was tearing one heart out a fair price for the lives of two others?
“You don’t need to say it,” Kin shook his head. “When we are far from here, when we look to the horizon and see nothing but emerald and jet, then we can talk. Say everything we have wanted to say.” He stuffed the metal cuffs back into his belt, took one last appraising look at Buruu’s wing. “It will be ready, Yukiko-chan. Two days. I give you my word.”
He touched two fingers to his brow, nodded to Buruu, then clomped from the pit and off into the darkness, leaving behind the faint stench of chi smoke. Yukiko stood and wrapped both arms around Buruu’s neck, pressed her face into his feathers, breathing him in. He was warm and soft, like the blankets she would curl up in near the fireside when she was a little girl. She wanted nothing more than to be far from here, cool wind in her hair, clean rain on her face. Alive and breathing.
This is not me. I hate this.
IT WILL BE OVER SOON. AT LEAST OUR PART. THE KAGÉ WILL HAVE THEIR REVOLUTION. THE LOTUS WILL BURN.
I don’t care. I don’t care about any of that. None of it matters.
OF COURSE IT MATTERS. YOU ARE PART OF THIS WORLD. YOU HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER.
How many people will die in this revolution?
HOW MANY WILL DIE WITHOUT IT?
I don’t want to be the one who starts it all. I just want my family back. My father safe. You free. That’s all I want.
YOU CANNOT HAVE THAT WITHOUT THE KAGÉ.
I know, I know. Yoritomo deserves to die. He killed my mother. Tortured my father. I hate him so much it’s turning me black inside. But doesn’t murdering him make me no better than he is? And what if killing him only makes things worse?
IN THE END, ALL QUESTIONS CAN BE DISTILLED INTO ONE. WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO GIVE UP TO GET THE THINGS YOU WANT?
I’d give up my life for any one of you.
DYING IS EASY. ANYONE CAN THROW THEMSELVES ONTO THE PYRE AND REST A HAPPY MARTYR. ENDURING THE SUFFERING THAT COMES WITH SACRIFICE IS THE REAL TEST.
She was back on the Thunder Child, her father’s voice ringing in her head.
“One day you will understand, Yukiko. One day you will see that we must sometimes sacrifice for the sake of something greater.”
She nodded, wiped the tears from her eyes, locked them in a room inside her mind and threw away the key. No more fear. No more regrets. Not for vague ideology or someone else’s notion of what was “right.” For the ones she loved. For her family.
All right then. Let’s start a war.
“What are you doing here?”
Yukiko flinched. Buruu’s growl rumbled through the floor, up through the soles of her feet. His hackles rose in ragged peaks across his back, eyes flashing. She frowned into the dark, recognizing the voice.
“Hiro?”
He stepped from the shadows, bare chest beneath his red silk kimono, embroidered tigers prowling down his arms. He was wearing a black obi, neodaishō crossed at the small of his back, crouched in their lacquered scabbards. His hair flowed loose, a frown darkening that beautiful, sea-green stare she’d dreamed of a lifetime ago.
“I came to see you, and you were not in your room. What are you doing out here without an escort, Yukiko?”
“Visiting with Buruu.”
“How did you get out of the palace? The guards did not see you leave.”
“Kitsune looks after his own.” She tried a shy smile, hoping to win him over.
“And the Guildsman?” His eyes narrowed, looking down the corridor Kin had left by. “Why was he here?”
“I didn’t ask.” She shrugged, hands clasped behind her back to hide the shakes. “I have nothing to say to their kind. I think he might be working on Yoritomo’s saddle.”
“Yukiko,” Hiro frowned. “If the Guild is plotting something . . .”
“Nobody is plotting anything.”
“You are lying.” He shook his head. “I can see it in your eyes.”
TELL HIM NOTHING.
“Nothing is going on,” Yukiko insisted. She stepped forward and pressed against him, arms around his waist. “You worry too much. Buruu is my friend. He gets lonely in the dark and I wanted to be alone with him. I miss him, Hiro. That’s all there is to it.”
“Swear to me.”
“I swear.” She looked directly into his eyes as she spoke, and the lie tasted like ashes in her mouth. “Nothing is going on.”
Hiro looked down into her face, expression softening, voice a soft murmur.
“I am sorry.” He touched her cheek, brushed stray hair away from her eyes. “I know you miss your friend. I know that he is dear to you in a way I cannot understand. But you should not be sneaking out of the palace without permission. You deceived the Shōgun before under my guard. I am . . .” He shook his head. “I am just afraid his faith in me will prove misplaced. If I fail him again . . .”
And there in the eve ning gloom, Yukiko saw him as if for the first time, as if the dark was somehow brighter than the day. Hiro wasn’t like her father. He didn’t serve Yoritomo because he’d been coerced or threatened. Hiro served because he believed it was right. Honor, loyalty, the Bushido Code, it was everything to him. He’d die before he betrayed it, one of Buruu’s happy martyrs. His life was meaningless without his Lord. He was a spinning, razor-sharp cog in the engine, born to privilege and never once questioning the rightness of it all.
This was a mistake.
In her heart she had known it all along. And, truth be told, he had never pretended otherwise. But she had wanted so badly for them both to be wrong, hoped against hope that he might be different from the others. If someone like Aisha could grow to see the truth of things, then anyone could.
Anyone who allowed themselves to, that is.
She felt Buruu in the back of her mind, no judgment or rebuke. He’d tried to warn her, told her Hiro was just another part of the control machine. She wished she’d listened.
Hiro pressed her tightly to him, hands clasped at the base of her spine, staring with those beautiful eyes that had once haunted her sleep. He began to speak, time slowing to a crawl as his lips parted to tell her the one thing she didn’t want to hear.
“I lo—”
She kissed him, stood on tiptoes and threw her arms around his neck and crushed her lips into his before he could finish the sentence. She didn’t want to listen to those three awful words, feel them open her up to the bone and see what the lies had done to her insides. She pressed her body against his and kissed him until they died on his lips, the impulse to speak slowly strangled in soft, blessed silence.
She kissed him like it was the last time.
Somewhere deep inside, she knew it would be.

A jagged splinter of rusted metal, shoved between his ribs and twisted until the bones popped. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. Nausea and vertigo, world swaying in some invisible wind as the ground split under his feet and yawned wide.
Kin leaned against the wall, fingers splayed on concrete as his universe dissolved. The measure-reel fell from numb, trembling hands, the figures he’d wanted to recheck drifting off into some dark, forgotten corner of his mind. He stared at Yukiko and the samurai in each other’s arms and felt vomit bubbling up in the back of his throat. The taste of rage in his mouth, hard and metallic, a razor’s edge.

He turned and staggered away, clutching his heart as if to hold back the blood.
What a stupid, blind fool.

Whispers to Michi, shrouded in bathhouse steam or the silken rustle of the dressing room, those small pale hands with the sword-grip calluses she’d never noticed before running a comb through her long, dark hair. Whispers beneath a blanket of shamisen music, the whisking and steeping of tea, Aisha’s diamondhard eyes betraying no hint of treachery. A fast Fushicho sky-ship with fake permits waiting at the docks. A note from Akihito, written in broad, clumsy kanji, a promise that he and Kasumi would be with the Kagé as they freed Masaru from his cell. A rendezvous in Yama city, one week from today. Sleepless nights and excuses for Hiro and long hours alone, staring at the ceiling in the dark.

And no word from Kin.
She stared at the mechanical arashitora on her dresser, warm moonlight flickering on the brass, waves of leaden butterflies in her stomach. There was no chance she would sleep tonight. She wished the moon would be on its way across the sky and the dawn arrive, bringing with it Yoritomo’s grand gala and distracted guards and empty arena. To be out. To be free.
Lightning kissed distant skies. The first autumn storm was rolling down from the Iishi, stretching dark fingers toward Kigen Bay. She prayed it would be dry tomorrow, that Susano-ō would hold back the black rain long enough to let Yoritomo’s soldiers avert their eyes and drop their guard.
She held her tantō tight in her hand. She saw the picture clearly in her mind: Yoritomo standing tall on his podium, arms spread wide as the sun sank below the horizon and he called for the fireworks to begin. The people’s faces upturned and soft with wonder as the dragon cannons and kindling wheels lit up the sky, spitting colored fire and blue-black fumes to choke all the good little boys and girls. And like a stone they would drop from the skies, thunder and blinding light behind them. And in their wake there would be blood, and screams, and the last male of Kazumitsu’s line lying dead on the ground.
An empty throne.
A new beginning.
War.

“Godsdamn this accursed heat,” Hajime swore.
“Aiya,” Rokorou muttered. “Moaning about it will help?”
The two guards were slumped in the thin shade of the prison gate, sweat

beading on their skin. The air was moist with storm-threat, clouds gathering to the north for a final push on the city. Hajime wiped his brow with his jin-haori and cast a mournful glance in the direction of the docks, listening to the sounds of music and bustling crowds drifting from the bay. The gala was well underway; the crackle of smoke sticks and spark poppers could be heard among the multitude of voices floating on the wind. He imagined his son’s eyes lit with delight as he watched the real fireworks to night.

“At least we get off at dusk,” he sighed. “The real party will start then, assuming this storm doesn’t piss all over everything.”
“You’re also assuming they’ll relieve us. Daisuke was too drunk to show up last festival.”
“If we’re stuck here all night, I’m going to . . .”
His sentence trailed off as the girl appeared, sashaying around the corner in a sleeveless, split-leg black kimono. She held a wicker basket in her arms. A beautiful tiger curled around one bicep, the imperial sun radiating across the other. Flawless make-up, polished lenses, gleaming, candy-red lips.
“Michi-chan,” Rokorou nodded, straightening slightly and sucking in his gut.
“Good day, brave bushimen,” she smiled.
“Why aren’t you at the gala? The parade will be starting soon.”
“My Lady commands me to bring refreshment to those stalwart souls who do honor to her brother, Yoritomo-no-miya, and forsake the gala’s joys for duty.”
The girl gave a mock salute, then reached into the basket and produced two bottles of rice wine and two ripe nectarines, fresh and plump. The guards’ eyes widened; the fruit was easily worth more than a week’s pay. They bowed thanks and took the offerings, shooting each other broad grins.
“Not so bad a duty after all, eh?” Rokorou took a long swig of wine. “Your Lady does us much honor, Michi-chan.” Hajime bowed again. Shrugging off his gauntlets, he cut the fruit and popped a slice between his teeth.
“Aiya, it’s good,” he groaned.
Rokorou plowed into his own fruit as Hajime remembered his manners, offering a slice to the serving girl. She blushed and bowed from the knee, looking to the floor.
“My thanks, sama, but the gift was for you alone.”
“At least have a drink with us?” Rokorou took another pull from the bottle, glaring up at the suns. The sky began to blur around the edges.
“Hai, drink and be joyful, give thanks to Yoritomo-no-miya, next Stormdancer of Shima.” Hajime laughed, stumbling back against the wall. He frowned and stared at the fruits in his seven hands, feeling the stone beneath his feet turn to jelly.
A gasp. The sound of metal and bone hitting stone. The stink of urine.
Shapes emerged from the shadows, moving swiftly. Two men grabbed the slumbering guards and dragged them down an alleyway. A young boy dashed a pail of brackish water onto the floor to wash away the piss and blood. Akihito rounded the corner, broad-brimmed straw hat, long scars showing on his chest between the folds of his uwagi. Kasumi walked beside him, surefooted, feline grace, bo-staff in her hands.
“Are we ready?” the big man asked.
Michi glanced to the alley mouth as her fellows returned in the uniforms of the poisoned guards. One of them tossed a ring of keys, glittering in the scarlet glare. Michi snatched them from the air without looking. She glanced up to the big man, nodded to Kasumi and drew her tsurugi from the basket. The blade was two feet long, straight and double-edged, keen as razors.
“Now we are.”
Thunder rolled in the distance.
“No mercy.”

Yukiko padded into the arena, split-toed socks on bare stone, hands folded inside the sleeves of her uwagi. She nodded to the bushiman guarding the archway, her shy smile returned with lecherous enthusiasm. He held up his hand as she approached, fingers spread, wrapped in banded iron.

A roar from the arena, deafening, bellowing, reverberating off the warm stone. The bushiman turned toward Buruu, eyes narrowing, tightening his grip on the war club at his waist. The hypo was heavy in her hands, slipping from her sleeve, black liquid sloshing viscous in the syringe. She slid it through a gap in his breastplate, just below his armpit. He gasped, clutched the pinprick and collapsed on the ground in a blacksleep stupor.

The echoes of the roar had died by the time his comrade returned from the privy, still tying up the waist of his hakama.
“What the hells is it making noise about now . . .”
The bushiman glanced up from his obi and saw his fellow passed out cold on the deck. He ran to his comrade’s body and knelt beside it, sloughing off his gauntlet and checking at the throat for a pulse. Yukiko stepped out of the shadows behind, footfalls soft as baby’s breath, needle gleaming between her fingers. The bushiman collapsed onto his friend’s body with a bleeding puncture in his neck.
The third and fourth bushimen were standing on the upper walls at the other side of the arena, staring out toward Kigen Bay. Music drifted on the sweltering wind as they spoke in hushed tones, cursing their misfortune at landing guard duty on today of all days. Her feet were quiet as ghosts behind them, a murmur of soft cloth on cool, hard gray. Dull sunlight flashed on surgical steel, a needle in each hand, thumbs poised on the plungers. Spots of blood welled from the needle-pricks, staining the fabric beneath their arms a deeper red. Each man collapsed without a whimper, and the sound of iron crashing hard onto stone echoed among the empty benches.
Looking down at the slumbering soldiers, Yukiko was reminded of a poem her mother had taught her when she was a little girl:

Tiger proudly roars.
Dragon dives and Phoenix soars. Fox gets the chicken.

“Kitsune looks after his own,” she whispered. She tossed the empty blacksleep hypos onto the unconscious bodies and touched the tattoo on her arm for luck. Buruu growled on the arena floor below.

THE STORM GROWS CLOSE.
I know.
Looking up at the fingers of dark cloud drifting over the noonday sun, she

A length of weighted chain flashed out of the darkness, wrapping around the bushiman’s throat. He gasped and clutched at the metal links turning his larynx to pulp. Akihito loomed out of the black, fist descending to knock the man senseless. Black shuriken stars whizzed from the shadows, cutting the second guard down as he drew breath to shout for help. Blood sprayed across the walls, random patterns of deep scarlet on dull, sweating rock.

Michi stepped from the dark, more throwing stars poised between her fingers. Kasumi prowled close behind, casting anxious glances back the way they’d come. Akihito’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and he could see the tension in Kasumi’s stance, swimming in her eyes. Her knuckles were white on the haft of her iron- shod bo- staff.

“Are you all right?” he whispered.
“I’m worried about Yukiko.”
“This way,” Michi nodded.
The trio stole along the corridor, creeping down narrow spiral stairs. The

chattering and screech of rats echoed off moist stone, air growing thicker as they descended. The stink of rotting meat and human waste clung to their skin, slick with sweat. Stone walls pressed in around them, all sweltering heat and noxious vapor.

Michi signaled a stop, crept forward in the darkness. Sounds of a scuffle, leather and metal on stone. A soft, wet exhalation. The girl returned and motioned for them to follow, a splash of someone else’s blood across her forehead and running thick down one cheek. The tsurugi in her hands gleamed black in the gloom.

“You don’t need to kill them,” Kasumi murmured.
“You think they would spare you, Hunter?”
“Why do you do this?” Akihito whispered. “Why help us?”
“Yoritomo must die,” Michi replied flatly, squinting into the black ahead.

They arrived at a T-junction, stopped to listen, pressed against the damp stone. “He hurt you?” Kasumi asked softly.
“Look at the world around you, Hunter,” Michi growled. “He’s hurting everyone.”

Yukiko peered from the grandstand shadows as the sound of clockwork and pistons rolled off the arena walls. She could see an Artificer emerging from one of the entryways, peering around the benches, a squat mechanical contraption on tank treads rolling behind him. The mechanoid dragged a four- wheel trailer covered with a dirty gray oilskin.

“Kin- san!” Yukiko bounced down the stone stairs, feet so light she felt she could fly. She couldn’t help throwing her arms around his neck, eyes alight with her smile. “You came.”

The Artificer disentangled himself from the hug, voice crackling like beetle shells underfoot.
“I gave you my word that I would.”
“I hadn’t heard from you in days. I feared something had happened to you.”
“We should start.” He turned, motioning to the servitor. “We don’t have much time.”
Yukiko helped him unload the trailer and bring the gear into Buruu’s pit. The thunder tiger eyed the Guildsman’s contraption, tail tucked between his legs. Long lengths of hollow metal, enameled with the same strange iridescent coating as the Shōgun’s motor-rickshaws. Sheets of treated canvas, the same lightweight skin as the balloon bladders of the sky-ships. Hydraulics and pistons and clockwork teeth.
THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG.
What do you mean?
THE WAY HE MOVES. THE WAY HE SPEAKS.
“Is everything all right, Kin-san?” Yukiko frowned.
“Ask Buruu to spread his wings, please.” Kin pulled a leather harness from the trailer, ridged with a series of interlocking gears and pistons. “I need to install the spinal axis first.”
The arashitora spread his wings, crippled voltage playing along his flat feathertips. The hairs on her arms prickled, the faint scent of ozone pierced the lotus reek. She stepped back and watched Kin work, unable to comprehend the machine he was strapping to Buruu’s back. She could see tension in his movements, hear a catch as his breath billowed from the apparatus coiled on his back.
“Kin, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head, eye aglow with the arc torch. “I need to concentrate.”
Yukiko fell silent, watching the pretty rain of sparks, the motion of his hands as he assembled his creation. Long curved rods of iridescence were affixed across the arashitora’s scapular quills and the line of his marginal coverts, extending beyond the severed primary flight feathers. Kin fixed the sheets of hard canvas over the skeletal frame, strapping them in place, tinkering at the series of gears and pistons that ran like a spine down Buruu’s back. Yukiko watched as the minutes ticked by, one atop the other, holding her breath as the mechanism neared completion.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
Kin paused for a second, sighed and shook his head.
“All right, try that,” he finally said, stepping back from Buruu. The arashitora looked uncertain but spread his wings regardless. Kin’s machine whirred smoothly, unspooling into wide fans, a broad series of canvas quills sitting where the tips of Buruu’s feathers should have been. Bones of shimmering metal, hydraulic muscles and reinforced joints. Buruu flapped again, bounding a few feet into the air, electricity crackling along the iridescent frame. The wings worked perfectly: a sleek song of lubricant and metal teeth, the rush of wind, straw dancing in the downdraft.
RAIJIN SAVE ME. THE BOY HAS DONE IT.
“Gods above, they work,” Yukiko beamed. “It works!”
Buruu leaped into the air, pounding his wings furiously. He sailed up twenty feet, thirty, swooping around their heads, beak clamped tightly on the triumphant roar that threatened to spill over and alert the entire city.
DO YOU SEE, YUKIKO? DO YOU SEE?
Yukiko threw her arms around Kin’s neck, planted a kiss on his metal cheek.
“Kin- san, you did it!”
Again, the boy extricated himself from her arms, flipping a switch on his belt. The burning blue light of his cutting torch arced at his wrist.
“He’s not free yet.”
Buruu landed, claws sparking across stone, shaking his whole body like a soggy hound. The Guildsman bent down and began cutting at the two-inch- thick iron chain around the thunder tiger’s throat. Molten steel spattered redhot onto the flagstones, the smell of burning metal drifted thick in the air. The arashitora nudged the Guildsman with his cheek and purred, a subtle gesture of thanks that made Yukiko’s heart swell.
We’re nearly home, Buruu.
The sound of the gala hung faint in the distance under the rumble of the gathering storm. She thought of the flight to come, into the mouth of the tempest, leaving this stinking city far behind them. Free. At last.
She looked at Buruu’s wings, pictured the small mechanical arashitora Kin had made for her, still sitting on her dresser.
“Aiya. I left the toy you made for me in my bedroom.”
Kin made a sound, deep within his helm. A sneer.
“Perhaps Lord Hiro can fetch it for you.”
AH.
“. . . What did you say?”
NOW I SEE.
Kin fixed her in his molten stare. She could see her face reflected in his single eye, illuminated blue-white by the cutting torch, brief joy dying in her eyes.
“You heard,” Kin rasped. “Where is Lord Hiro? Shouldn’t he be here ‘protecting’ you?”
She could feel Buruu in her head, the vaguely self- satisfied air of one who’s finally found the missing piece to a troublesome puzzle. But the smugness was underscored with uncertainty about the danger Kin now posed.
HE KNOWS.