The Last Stormdancer (12 page)

“The Guild leaders who ordered such dishonorable aggression have been brought to justice. Their heads delivered to me personally. And my vengeance? Already I bring them under my heel. I have commanded their chi-production be brought under Sh
ō
gunate control. Their refineries will be constructed in each clan capital now, where they can be monitored by my officials. No longer will they practice their arts out in the wilderness beyond my sight or knowledge. It is time they learned to whom they owe allegiance.”

“You bring their refineries into our cities?” Ami was incredulous. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

Tatsuya stood slowly, hand on his sword. His scowl growing black as storm clouds above the tiger mask. “Mind your tongue, honorable wife. You speak to your Sh
ō
gun now.”

“What of the sickness? The blacklung? The arashitora fought beside you because they thought you meant to expel the Guild! Unravel it! You gave Jun your word!”

“I recall making no promises to the beast-speaker.”

“Beast-speaker?” Ami blinked. “He is a
Stormdancer,
Tatsuya! Perhaps the last of them!”

“Indeed? Then where is his thunder tiger?”

Ami fell silent, incredulity and rage choking her to stillness.

“The Guild has some intriguing interpretations of holy scripture regarding the nature of those who speak with animals.” Tatsuya crossed the wooden floor, heavy boots ringing upon the boards. Towering over his wife now, staring down at her with cold, black eyes. “The Book of Ten Thousand Days is quite clear upon the topic, when read in a certain light.”

“… A certain light?”

“Hai,” Tatsuya nodded. “The book also speaks clearly on the matter of wives. The nature of deference. Obedience. I suggest you peruse it, before next you consider it prudent to burst in upon one of my council sessions like some moon-touched peasant-child…”

“What has become of you, Tatsuya? Always you and I had our differences, but now…” Ami shook her head. “It seems I know you not at all…”

The Sh
ō
gun stared from behind his breather, golden tiger fangs bared and gleaming.

“Did you ever?”

*   *   *

She found him in the garden, his thin pine walking stick in hand. He stood in the shade of a twisted maple, leaves turning gray in the stink and slow exhaust haze. Every day, it seemed to be growing just a fraction worse. A few Guild ships now rumbling in the skies above Kigen, smudging the clouds with thick plumes of blue-black smoke. The haze of motor-rickshaw thickening in the streets, beggars coughing in the alleyways, the taste of lotus leaking slowly into the water. The food. The air. Everything.

“Jun-san.”

He turned toward the sound of her voice, and she saw he had tears in his eyes.

“Jun-san, what is wrong?”

“I heard them crying.” He pointed to the gardens beyond the palace verandah. “I came to see. On days such as this, I wish I were truly blind.”

Ami saw a clutch of servants gathered around a tall stack of bamboo cages. The little prisons were filled with sparrows, all hues of the rainbow, screeching their distress. The servants reaching through the bars, one by one, plucking the birds out and setting to with wickedly sharp snips; clipping the sparrow’s wings as they struggled and screeched.

“The ones who could fly away already did.” Jun’s voice was that of a man with a hollowed-out chest. “But the servants told me the Lady Mai enjoys their song. The Sh
ō
gun had hunters in the north catch them, bring them here.” He looked around the graying gardens as if he could truly see. “To die. Singing.”

Jun frowned, pressed his hand to his brow.

“I can hear them. All of them. The sparrows. The seagulls. The cats and dogs and rats. It is getting worse. I cannot stand it. It was not supposed to be this way. I was supposed to save the world…”

“Come inside, Jun-san.” Ami put her arm about his waist, led him up to the verandah. “Come with me.”

They walked together, Jun’s stick tapping upon the boards. Servants bowing in deference to the Lady, but not the boy. Lingering stares. Puzzled, even. They had not been told of the Battle at Four Sisters. The minstrels did not sing of the Stormdancer Jun who came to their Sh
ō
gun’s aid. And they wondered who he was; this confidante of the First Lady. This boy she spent so much time with, when instead she should be furnishing their Lord with sons.

They found an empty room in the training halls—a dojo filled with wooden dummies, wooden swords, wooden armor. A hollow facade, just as their lives had become.

“We should not be alone,” Jun said. “It is unwise.”

She ran her hand across his cheek, gentle as first snows. Watching him shiver.

“I miss you,” she breathed.

Stepping closer, her body pressed against his, bleeding with want.

“I know myself a fool for saying so. But I cannot forget.”

Jun reached up with trembling hands, running soft fingertips over her face as if to see her. She sighed, eyelids fluttering closed, his touch making her thighs ache. Her breath coming faster, his fingers across her lashes, brushing her lips, the smooth curve of her throat. Lunging forward, her mouth seeking his, her arms about him as he crushed her to him, the press of his lips making her shiver. Gods, she wanted him.

Need you.

Breathe you.

“We are both fools, then,” he sighed.

Running her fingers through his hair, drifting apart with reluctance, her eyes fixed on his sightless stare. All about her was lies, but this, here in her arms. He was real. When all else was shadows and spiders.

“There is something wrong with Tatsuya,” Ami whispered. “He plots with the Guild rather than punishing them. He speaks of you…” She shook her head. “I fear you are in danger here, Jun. You should go. Back to Koh. Away from this palace. The serpents within.”

“I sense the truth of it. There are eyes ever upon me here. I feel them crawling on my skin, though I have no eyes to see them.”

“Not even Whisper and Silk?” Ami smiled. “Those cats seem to spend more time in your company than mine. I have not seen the ungrateful little devils in days…”

“I have not seen them, either,” Jun frowned. “Now that you make mention…”

Ami pulled back from his embrace, dread unspooling in her belly. “You do not suppose—”

Jun put his finger to her lips, head tilted. Expression paling. Breath catching in his lungs.

“… There are soldiers coming,” he said. “Many.”

“You must go, Jun,” Ami said. “Go now. Quickly.”

“Who says they come for me?”

“Tatsuya would not harm me. He would not dare. But the way he spoke of you … you must go, Jun, now!”

A smile on his lips. Melting her heart.

“I cannot die today, remember?”

He grasped his cane, drew forth his gleaming blade.

“It seems I have not saved the world yet…”

The doors slammed open, a dozen samurai in iron armor stomping into the room, studded war clubs in their hands. Their faces covered by iron masks, crafted into the likes of oni demons straight from the Yomi hells; all twisted snarls and upturned tusks. Behind them, four Guildsmen in their suits of leather and brass, strange devices clutched in their hands; hollow tubes making a faint sloshing sound, cylindrical hoppers feeding into long, smooth barrels.

“Kitsune Jun,” said the samurai captain. “By order of Sh
ō
gun Tatsuya, you are to surrender your arms and come with us. You are under arrest.”

“For what crime?” Lady Ami demanded.

“Impurity,” hissed a Guildsman.

Ami ignored the Lotusman, a challenging stare fixed on the lead samurai. “Kitsune Jun saved your Sh
ō
gun’s life, Captain. Tatsuya would not even be alive, let alone sitting the Four Thrones if not for him. This is the courtesy we show now in the Sh
ō
gun’s palace?”

“I follow my orders, First Lady,” the samurai replied. “I humbly suggest you take issue up with your Lord and husband.”

“This is madness. This is—”

“Enough,” rasped the Lotusman. “Take the abomination into custody.”

The samurai reached out to seize Jun’s arm. The boy backed away, three steps, raising his blade into guard position. His eyes were closed, head titled slightly, a gentle smile curling his lips. His voice soft as new-forged steel.

“I warn you, honorable soldiers, all,” he said. “If you stand against me, you stand against the gods themselves. It was spoken by my—”

A flurry of hisses from the raised barrels clutched in the Guildsmen’s hands. Ami cried out, Jun shoving her aside as whistling projectiles filled the space between them; tiny needles set with syringes, filled with gleaming black liquid. Jun moved, his sword a blur, rolling and swaying, slicing one, two, three from the air. The samurai lunged, war clubs raised, closing about the boy as he swayed in the hail of fire. Jun struck, swift as quicksilver, slicing through the join at one man’s elbow, stepping behind another as the Lotusmen fired again, the samurai’s back sparking under the needle flak.

“Stop this,” Ami roared. “I am the First Lady of this Sh
ō
gunate, and I command you to stop this!”

Jun struck again, pushing his blade through the eye socket of one samurai’s mask, the soldier screaming and falling to his knees. Jun vaulted up off the man’s shoulders, flipping himself overhead, landing amidst the Lotusmen. His blade a whistling, crimson blur, weaving in the air to the tune of murder, blood spraying in haphazard patterns across the dojo walls. One Lotusman collapsed screaming, two more forever silenced. But as the fourth fell back before Jun’s onslaught, he let loose a last volley from his weapon, one of the tiny needles striking the boy in his shoulder, burying itself to the hilt.

Ami cried out, drew the tant
ō
hidden in the small of her back. She stabbed the Lotusman in the throat, a gush of crimson warmth flooding over her hands, painted upon her lips. Bubbling nausea in her belly as the Guildsman fell, clutching the spray at his neck. The floor slippery beneath her feet. The first man she had ever killed. Gods …

Jun turned back to the samurai, the figures surrounding him now. His chest heaving, frown forming between his brows, shaking his head as if to clear it. Blade dripping gore. Plucking the empty needle from his shoulder. Swaying on his feet now. Ami crying out as the samurai lunged.

He fended them off for a moment or two more, opening up another at his throat. Yet his footsteps were unsteady. Head drooping. Shoulders slumping. Sword hanging limp in his grip. Ami cried out, stepping into the fray only to be seized by iron hands, flung into a corner. She hit the wall hard, breath knocked loose, blood on her tongue. A club stuck Jun’s sword arm, breaking it clean, the boy crying out as he fell to his knees. His sword clattering to the dojo floor as another blow crashed across his shoulders, splayed him flat upon the boards. Clenched fists rising and falling, Ami trying to catch breath enough to scream. Jun falling still, beaten senseless, head lolling on his neck as they slapped manacles about his wrists. Hauling him from the room now, supported between two hulking iron figures, his bare feet trailing through pools of cooling blood. Leaving her there, clutching her breast. Staring at his sword, gleaming in the crimson puddle, now as useless as his certainty. His prophecy. His destiny.

Weeping. Cursing. Hair in ragged curtains over her eyes. And dragging herself across the floor, through the blood, she clutched the blade, the hollow scabbard, hauling herself to her feet.

Husband
.

She had to find Tatsuya …

*   *   *

Three figures in a shadowed hallway, lit by the scarlet light of flickering lanterns.

The first, a son of the great Kazumitsu Dynasty, son of Sataro-no-miya, victor of the Battle of Four Sisters. Absolute Lord of all he surveyed. Sh
ō
gun of the Shima Imperium. Unquestioned. Unchallenged. Untouchable.

The second, a widowed bride. Her belly swollen with her beloved’s child. Still dressed in the mourning black, barely a month since her husband’s passing.

Standing together, heads bowed, speaking softly.

A third figure, hidden in the shadows. Quiet as whispers. Still as stone. A bloody sword clutched in her white-knuckle grip.

She watched them. The pair. Speaking in hushed tones. Dread and disbelief in her belly. Recalling his face in the battle’s aftermath, drenched in blood. The gentle kiss he had placed on her brow—the first touch from him she had felt in years.

That should have been enough.

She was certain now. But she had to see.

The pair of them. Soft voices. A wicked, curling smile.

A hand, placed on a swollen belly.

Lips, upturned to a gentle kiss.

The Sh
ō
gun removing his golden tiger mask, the face beneath one she recognized at last. Almost identical to his brother’s. A near perfect symmetry. But still, she should have known …

Not a bull upon the throne.

A bear in a bull’s skin.

Curse me for a fool
.

And just as certain, the thought that pulled her back from the brink.

The truth that loosened her grip on the blade’s hilt, and all desire here to remain.

No one will believe me …

*   *   *

I was not there that day.

I did not see him dragged through the streets before a wondering crowd. The figures in leather and brass on either side of him. Eyes of bloody-red glass. The four stones, newly erected in the Market Square. The mob gathered around it, as if some new sport. The blind boy there chained, eyes open and seeing nothing at all.

I did not hear the figures in their white tabards, reading of “impurity” from ancient and twisted scripture. Proclaiming a new order, a new law, set with the Sh
ō
gun’s seal. I did not hear their lies. The feeble justifications for atrocity you monkey-children so love to weave. I did not hear the sound of the flames flaring at their wrists. The tinder beneath him crackling.

His screams.