Stormdancer (4 page)

Kigen city was awash with sight and sound; a thrumming, sweltering hive peopled by two-legged insects in rainbow colors. A pall of lotus fumes hung in the air, bubbling in dozens upon dozens of oily black streams from the exhaust pipes of the sky-ships floating above.

Cigar-shaped canvas balloons with rusted metal exoskeletons filled the sky. Their inflatables were under-slung with the long hulls of wooden junks, their holds full of gaijin prisoners of war, trade goods and precious blood lotus transported from the clan fields. Each balloon was painted with the totem spirit of the zaibatsu that owned it, and the skies seemed full of clashing tigers (Tora), snarling dragons (Ryu), blazing phoenix (Fushicho) and even the occasional nine-tailed fox (Kitsune). Each hull also wore the distinctive kanji symbols of the Lotus Guild, painted in broad brush strokes along the keel. Shima’s roads were not made of brick or dirt, but of red, choking cloud.

The clans of the Tiger, Phoenix, Dragon and Fox had once stood among two dozen extended families, scattered across the Eight Isles, all subjects of the great Shima Imperium. Yet when the first Shōgun of the Tiger clan, great Tora Kazumitsu I, rose in rebellion against the corrupt Tenma emperors, he had rewarded his three loyal captains with vast tracts of land, and stewardship over all the clans within. And thus, two dozen slowly became four, the great zaibatsu conglomerates gradually consuming the clans of the Falcon, the Serpent, the Ox and their fellows, their kami spirits fading from thought and memory, until all that remained were a few scattered tattoos and footnotes in the great, dusty scrolls of history.

Exotic scents and rippling heat drifted up from the distant marketplace, always overshadowed by sputtering motors and lotus exhaust spilling from the engines of the sky-ships, the motor-rickshaws, the rail yards, the vast, smoking chi refinery. Yukiko found herself gagging whenever she was down here; the myriad smells and colors mixed with that oily stench were enough to make her stomach turn.

She pushed through the crowds, keeping one hand on the purse hidden in the obi sash around her waist. Knowing her father, he had already spent his pay on drink and smoke, and the few coins she possessed would be all they had to eat with this month. The gutters of Kigen had birthed a thousand pickpockets with ten thousand sticky, oil-stained fingers, each more hungry and desperate than the last. Here in Downside, the fool who only found himself parted from his money was having a good day.

The crowd was a mix of grimy skin and painted, pristine flesh, dirty rags and luxuriant silk, pressed together in the flyblown throng. There was scarcely a bare face in sight: common folk wore polarized goggles and kerchiefs tied over their mouths, people of wealth and standing had expensive mechanized breathers slung around their faces. It was as if the entire populace had something to hide. Without facial expressions to serve as a guide, social interaction on Kigen streets was mostly measured in flesh; deference gauged in the depth of the other man’s bow, hand gestures serving in place of a smile, an aggressive stance adopted to showcase a frown. A language spoken by the body as well as the mouth.

The buildings of Downside were a multi-storied, ramshackle affair, piled on top of one another without forethought or planning; a constantly swelling blister of cracking clay and bleached wood. The Upside architecture across the river was just as decrepit, but the compositions at least held something close to symmetry. The city’s broad cypress-bark roofs were desiccated and gray, stripped of paint by the merciless sun and polluted black rains that fell in Shima’s winter months. Windows of clouded beach glass or rice-paper stared out with blind, vacant expressions onto the churning crush of flesh on the cobbles below. At each twisted intersection crouched a small stone shrine to Fūjin, the God of Wind and Ways. Temples to the Lady of the Sun, blessed Amaterasu, and her father, Lord Izanagi, the great Maker God, stood shoulder to shoulder with towering brothels, gambling pits and the smoke-filled, tar-stained walls of lotus dens. Each north-facing window was scattered with a small handful of rice; an offering to appease the hunger of the Dark Mother, dread Lady Izanami, the Earth Goddess corrupted by the Yomi underworld after the birth of Shima.

Three rivers clawed sluggish paths through the city’s bowels, their waters as black as tar. Kigen jail sat hunched on the crumbling banks of the Shoujo, glowering at the rusted metal skeleton of the rail yards across the way. Chapterhouse Kigen loomed at the black, foaming collision of the Shiroi and Junsei, a fivesided fist of yellow stone, punching skyward through broken cobbles. It stretched four stories into the reeking air, pentagonal, windowless walls set with five rusted iron gates around the base, throwing a dark shadow over Kigen’s pockmarked face. The vast, charred chimney stacks of the refinery to the south retched their filth into the sky, black fingers of greasy stink and acrid taste worming their way down the throats of the seething masses. The din of metal upon metal, thousands of hungry voices, the squeal of rutting corpse-rats. High, pitched roofs thrust their peaks at the red skies above, lending the smoking city skyline a jagged, saw-toothed shape.

Shouldering her way through a mob of rickshaw runners on a smoke break, Yukiko caught sight of the barometric apparatus of a weatherpriest bobbing through the crowd. The whirling, multi-armed periscope disappeared through the door of a noodle store and her stomach growled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten today.

“You want some breakfast?” She looked back at Akihito, still wading through the masked mob a good distance behind.
“I thought we were hunting thunder tigers?” he yelled.
“You want to do that on an empty stomach?” Yukiko smiled, stepping into the crowded bar and pulling down her kerchief.
A short boy with a pimpled face and a small tiger tattoo asked her desire, and was soon scooping spoonfuls of thin black crab and tofu into rice-cracker bowls. The air boiled, thick with steam. Yukiko glanced around the store as she waited, listening to the sound box reporting on the day’s crop yield (bountiful, all praise the Shōgun), the war with the gaijin overseas (after twenty years of glorious battle, inevitable victory would soon be at hand) and last week’s refinery fire (an accidental fuel leak being the cause). A greasy film coated the army recruitment posters plastered over every inch of wall. Illustrations of sternfaced boys shouted silent slogans against a backdrop of imperial suns.

“Be all you can be.”
“The best and brightest.” “For Bushido! For honor!”

Yukiko watched the weatherpriest, a wizened little man in a rubber suit of buckles and straps. Small arcs of red current danced up the apparatus on his back as he shook his divining rod at the posters and cackled. His sort were an uncommon sight in the clan metropolises— most weatherpriests spent their time in the rural provinces, bilking superstitious farmers from their hard-earned kouka in exchange for prayers and invocations to Susano-ō, God of Storms.

“Bring the rain,” they would cry. “Stop the rain,” they would pray. The clouds would come and go exactly as they pleased, the weatherpriests would enjoy the blessings of serendipity or shake their heads and speak of “unfavorable portents,” and the farmers would stand a few coins lighter either way.

Nodding her thanks and paying the lad behind the counter with a few braided copper kouka, Yukiko stepped back into the babbling street and handed a bowl to Akihito. The big man was busy slapping away the hands of a ragswathed pickpocket. A sharp boot to the backside sent the boy running off into the crowd, shouting colorful criticisms of Akihito’s sexual prowess.

“None for Masaru?” The giant swiped at the sea of flies around his head. “He can buy his own.”
“You gave all his winnings to the yak.’ Akihito made a face. “Mine too, I

should add.”
Yukiko smiled sweetly, “That’s why I’m buying you breakfast.” “What about Kasumi?”
Yukiko’s smile disappeared. “What about her?”
“Well, has she eaten, or . . .”
“If Kasumi wants to eat, I’m sure she’s taken care of herself. She’s never had

The giant pouted and shouldered his way through the crowd, sipping the piping-hot noodles with care. Masaru groaned on Akihito’s shoulder.
“I think he’s coming round.”
Yukiko shrugged.
“Knock him out again if you like.”
The crowd in front of them parted, stepping out of the path of an iron motor-rickshaw marked with the kanji symbols of the Lotus Guild. Yukiko stayed in the street as the sputtering metal beast rolled toward her on thick rubber tires, bulbous headlights aglow, spewing blue-black fumes into the air behind. It creaked to a stop a few inches short of colliding with her shins. The driver sounded the horn, but Yukiko refused to step aside.
The driver blasted the horn again, waving at her to get out of the road. His profanities were muffled behind the beach glass windshield, but Yukiko could still make out the best of them. She plucked a noodle from her bowl, popped it between her lips and chewed slowly.
“Come on.” Akihito grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the way.
The rickshaw driver stomped on the accelerator. The machine belched a cloud of fumes into the already choking haze of street-level exhaust and began rolling again. Yukiko could see the silhouette of a Lotus Guildsman in the rear seat.
Like all its brethren, the Lotusman was encased head to foot in a brass atmos- suit, studded with fixtures and gears and spinning clockwork, shielding it from the pollution the rest of the populace breathed daily. Its helmet was insectoid, all smooth lines and sharp curves. A cluster of metallic tentacles spilled from its mouth, plugged via bayonet fixtures into the various contraptions riveted to its outer shell: breather bellows, fuel tanks and the mechabacus that every Guildsman wore on its chest. The device resembled an abacus that had been dipped in glue and rolled around in a bucket of capacitors, transistors and vacuum tubes, and the Lotusman clicked a few beads across its surface, staring at Yukiko with red, faceted eyes as the vehicle cruised past. Although the rank- and-file members of the Guild were referred to as “Lotusmen,” their gender was actually impossible to determine.
She blew it a kiss anyway.
When the motor-rickshaw was a good distance away, Akihito released his grip on Yukiko’s arm and sighed. “Why do you always get in their way?”
“Why do you always move?”
“Because life out here is better than life in Kigen jail, that’s why.”
Yukiko scowled, and turned away.
They walked on, past the pentagonal walls of the Guild chapterhouse, passing in silence over wide stone archways bridging the slime- smeared banks of the Shoujo and Shiroi. Yukiko glanced over the railing at the black river water below, saw a dead fish floating in the choking muck, two beggars wading out through the filth toward it. A street minstrel was bent over his instrument in the shade on the other side of the bridge, singing an out-of-tune song about the spring wind, the threadbare rug before him scattered with a few meager copper bits. The crowd grew thicker, street volume rising, hundreds of voices joined together to form a constant, rolling hum.
Yukiko and Akihito squeezed through the mob and out into the broad, bustling expanse of the Market Square. The plaza stretched one city block on each side; a vast, crowded space lined with store facades of every variation under the sun. Spice merchants hocked their wares alongside flesh pedlars and textilemen. Food stalls and clothiers and herbalists, holy men from various temples selling blessings for copper bits next to street courtesans and thugs for hire. Dozens of performers amazing the crowds while cutpurses weaved among the flesh with sharp, smiling faces. Goggle vendors everywhere, selling massproduced lenses from wooden boxes slung around their necks. Beggars in the gutters, swaying before their alms bowls, the flint-eyed stares of grubby children with growling bellies and shanks of sharpened iron hidden in their rags. The scarlet jin-haori tabards of the city soldiers were everywhere amidst the mob; red sharks cruising for wounded meat.
In the center of the market lay a large mall of gray brick, sunk one or two feet below street level. Four columns of scorched stone rose out of the ground, one at each cardinal point, towering above the milling crowds. Each one stood ten feet high, studded with pairs of charred iron manacles. The official name for the mall was the “Altar of Purity.” Locals called them the “Burning Stones.”
Four Lotus Guildsmen were stacking bundles of dry tinder around the northern pillar, eyes glowing the color of blood, red light gleaming on the sleek surfaces of their mechanized atmos- suits. Segmented pipes connected the blackened fixtures at their wrists to large tanks mounted on their backs. Yukiko stared at the white jin-haori tabards they wore over their metal shells, the kanji symbols that denoted their sect within the Guild.
“Purifiers,” she spat.
She caught a glimpse of color on the steps leading down to the Burning Stones; a small freestanding slab of polished flint, no more than four inches high. It was an ihai—a spirit tablet laid to mark the passing of a loved one. Real flowers were impossible to find in the streets of Kigen, so the mourner had arranged a delicate circle of rice-paper blooms at its base. Yukiko couldn’t make out the name carved into the stone. As she craned her neck to get a better look, one of the Purifiers clomped up the stairs, stamped on the tablet and scattered the flowers with its boot.
Yukiko stared at the ashes beneath the blackened columns, at the crushed paper petals blowing in the wind, gnawing at her lip. Her heart was pounding in her chest.
Akihito kept his voice low, shook his head.
“The Guild must have caught another one.”
A crowd was gathering around the edges of the mall; a mix of the morbidly curious and the genuinely fanatical, young and old, men and women and children. Their heads turned as a wail rang out across the market, an anguished cry, threadbare with fear. Yukiko saw a small figure being dragged through the square by two more Purifiers, a girl only a few years younger than her. Kicking and thrashing as she came, dressed in black, hair tangled about her face. Her eyes were wide with terror as she struggled against that cold, mechanized grip; a child’s fist against a mountainside. She stumbled, knees dragged bloody across the cobbles as the Purifiers hauled her to her feet again.
“Impure!” A cry went up from a few of the zealots among the mob, echoed across the square. “Impure!”
The girl was dragged down the steps, screaming and sobbing all the way. The Guildsmen hauled her onto the tinder, pressed her back against the northern Burning Stone. As two Purifiers closed a pair of manacles about the girl’s wrists, a third stepped forward and spoke in a mechanical rasp, a voice that sounded like the song of a hundred angry lotusflies. The words flowed as if known by rote; a snatch of scripture from the Book of Ten Thousand Days.