The Last Stormdancer (2 page)

Murmurs and growls among the Skymeet, elders looking on the boy in wonderment. And he spoke then, this boychild, though his lips did not move. And amongst the tempest of my own thoughts, his were birdsong and beauty; a melody I had never heard, and yet knew as if by heart.

I speak to the minds of beasts, if that is your meaning. Though I claim no kinship with you or any other spirit-beast, great one. Of that honor, I am unworthy.

My eyes narrowed. Growl bubbling and bursting in my chest.

WHO ARE YOU?

I fear I do not yet know the answer to that question. But my mother’s people, the Kitsune clan, they call me by name of Jun.

He pulled aside the heavy cloth at his shoulder, revealing a simple scribble in the shape of a nine-tailed fox on his right arm. I am told you monkey-children put stock in the ink in your skin—I tell you now, his was none to speak of.

I looked to my Khan. Uncertain. Back to the boy, whose eyes stared at the ground beside my feet as if some secret were buried in the frost below us.

WHAT YOU WANT, MONKEY-CHILD?

Ah. Now
that
is a far easier question to answer, great one
.

A smile lit his lips, just the beginnings, curling at the edges with a hint of what tasted like arrogance. He drummed his fingers upon the haft of his walking stick.

I want to save the world
.

His lightless gaze roamed the faces of my brethren, each in turn, as if he could truly see.

I am hoping you will help me.

*   *   *

Three figures sat vigil over the Fifth Sh
ō
gun of the Kazumitsu Dynasty. Three companions to keep the great Sataro-no-miya company in this, his final hour of life.

The first of course, was Death. Hovering beside the bed, dampening every faint exhalation, creeping through the old man’s veins with every beat of his struggling heart. Patient as glaciers. A pale smile on bloodless lips. Death knew it would be soon.

Oh, yes.

The second and third participants in the closing moments of Sh
ō
gun Sataro’s life were his two sons, Tatsuya and Riku. The boys were twins, handsome as devils paired. Jaws you could break bricks on. Long dark hair swept back from widow’s peaks, ink-black and luxuriant. Bow-shaped lips and high cheekbones and bottomless eyes, skin the color of melting gold.

Though identical in seeming, the brothers shared temperaments disparate as dawning and dusk. Riku was known around court as the Bear—swift to anger, often irritable, armed with thin patience and no humor whatsoever. Tatsuya was called the Bull—stubborn, staunch, and if rumor was to be paid heed, prone to rutting with anything not nailed to the floor. And yet both twins were possessed of a regal bearing. Confidence and assurance. Nobility, born and bred.

Killers, also.

The terminal difficulties of their delivery into this world accounted for the absence of Sataro’s wife, Eri, from his bedside (why the Maker does not allow you to deliver your young in eggs baffles me, monkey-child). Lady Eri’s final exit during the entrance of her two bouncing baby boys also provided quandary that had plagued the ministers of Sh
ō
gun Sataro’s court for twenty years. For in all the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth following Lady Eri’s death, the midwives who delivered Tatsuya and Riku could not say, for sure and certain, which of the boys had arrived first. And since rulership of the Imperium was seen as a mandate handed down by the Maker God himself, no one in court dared name the true firstborn and risk the Maker’s wrath by choosing the wrong son.

As a result, Tatsuya and Riku were … wary in each other’s presence.

To say the Bull and the Bear disliked each other would be unkind. To say their father was reluctant to incur the Maker’s wrath by settling the matter of succession right before he shuffled off this mortal coil would be understatement. And to say either Tatsuya or Riku would be unwilling to murder his sibling in exchange for absolute rule of the Sh
ō
gunate would be an outright lie.

Wary in each other’s presence, as I said.

I was not there, of course. The presence of a two-ton thunder tiger in the bedchambers of the Lord of the Sh
ō
gunate would be somewhat conspicuous. And if you find yourself now wondering how I tell this side of the tale when I was not there to witness it, I will save you the suspense and offer simple explanation.

Death told me.

“My sons…”

Sh
ō
gun Sataro’s voice was a feeble wheeze, flecked with bloody spittle. Tatsuya and Riku both moved closer, one on either side, hands clasped with their father’s. They leaned forward, into the cancer and bedpan stink, the old Sh
ō
gun’s lips rasping against their ears.

“We are here, Father,” said Tatsuya.

“What would you have of us, Sh
ō
gun?” Riku asked.

“One thing,” the old man breathed.

“What is it?” asked the twins.

“Forgiveness…”

The old man inhaled once.

Softly sighed.

And there, he died.

Riku stood, swift as blinking, the Bear’s knuckles white upon his katana hilt. Tatsuya stood slower, tears in his eyes, stare locked on his twin. The Bull’s hand drifted to his own sword, but his stance spoke of an unwillingness to draw it.

His brother decided for him.

A flash of folded steel, the ringing hymn of blade’s edge on scabbard’s lip, and Riku’s katana was in his hand. Tatsuya’s weapon was drawn a moment later, the young Lord barely warding off his brother’s blow. A bright rain of sparks, the ringing clash of steel on steel. Riku pressed, striking at his brother’s head, throat, chest. Each parry ringing a different note; a tiny orchestra, bright and gleaming and deadly.

The brothers moved as twins would, mirroring the other’s advance, strike, lunge, feint. Breathless in but a moment, both hearts pumping with the knowledge that the victor of this fray would sit upon the Four Thrones, would rule the Imperium from the tip of Shabishii to the shores of Seidai, while the other burned beside their father on the pyre. The Bull ducked a vicious blow, sidestepped another, smashing his brother’s katana aside as the Bear overextended. But instead of a counterstrike, Tatsuya took a moment to breathe soft words through gritted teeth.

“Not like this, brother,” he said, gesturing to their father’s corpse. “Not here.”

Riku clenched his jaw, face grim. He struck again, blindingly swift, sparks lighting dark eyes as his katana danced. Again. Again.

“Better it be just you and I, brother,” he said. “Just the two of us, without the nation beside us.”

Another succession of blows. Furniture smashed, tables upturned, vases shattered. Sparks and spit and blood.

Ragged breath.

Narrowed eyes.

Pause.

“You speak true, brother.” Tatsuya nodded, chest heaving. “But will you murder your own twin at the foot of your father’s deathbed for the right to sit in his still-warm chair?”

Riku’s grip upon his katana slackened. He glanced at the body of the man who had made him. The portrait of his mother over the bed—killed in the act of bringing him and Tatsuya into this world. Once the brothers had been all to each other; the first nine months of their lives floating in the same lightless warmth, drifting off to sleep to the song of each other’s heartbeats.

And now?

And now …

“… No. I will not.”

Riku backed away, lowering his sword, slow and measured, eyes upon his twin’s. But Tatsuya made no attempt at treachery, lowering his own katana and glancing at the body now cooling between the sheets. He wiped the back of one hand across sweat-slick lips.

“We will burn him,” Tatsuya said. “Bury him. Grieve him. As honorable sons should.”

“And then?”

“And then…” Tatsuya paused, meeting his brother’s eyes.

They spoke as one, a single word, floating in the air like lead.

“War.”

*   *   *

I am hoping you will help me.

Our Khan peered at the boy who could not peer back. I noted throughout all the roaring, all the thunder and howling wind, the little winter sparrow on the monkey-child’s shoulder remained calm as millpond water. Quiet confidence mirroring the boy on which it perched. Eyes flitting over the thunder tigers around the Khan’s throne, drifting ever back toward mine.

—HELP YOU?—

The Khan did not speak, yet his words were a tempest in our minds. Somehow, through the boy, we all of us could hear him as if he roared with lungs and beak and tongue.

—WHY WE HELP YOU, MONKEY-CHILD?—

The boy stepped forward, covered his fist and bowed low. I stood close, muscles taut, ready to drench the snow with him should he show some sign of deceit. But the only weapons he wielded were words. Simple words. True words.

I have walked far, oh great Khan. I have spoken with the phoenix of the Hogosha mountains, whose wings are flame. I spoke with tanuki and henge and kappa and the great dragons of the sea. They speak of a sickness. A poisoning. Younglings born deformed, or worse, still and dead. A sadness that bids the dragons swim north, the phoenix curl up and die. And none can explain it.

At this, my hackles rose. The sickness we knew. The sting of its loss I had felt full well …

—BUT YOU CAN EXPLAIN, MONKEY-CHILD?—

The boy smiled. Slow and sad.

I do not know for certain. But I believe the smoke rising from our cities, tasting black and clinging thick to every lungful—I believe this is the sickening’s cause. I believe the blood lotus we humans plant in our soil will be the death of this island. If we do not stop it.

—WE?—

I hope so, yes.

The Khan spread his wings, soared down off his throne, landed in the snow before this strange little monkey-child. I could hear his old bones creaking. See the film of age covering his eyes. One day soon, one of the bucks would challenge him for the stone seat. Change was coming. All of us could feel it. My mother had named me for it before she …

Before …

—WHO MAKE THIS SMOKE? THIS SICKNESS?—

They are called the Lotus Guild, great Khan. They are masters of the machine. And the strength and wealth those machines give them buys much power. There are many of my kind who side with them. Many who do not care about the sickness this smoke causes.

—THEN WHY WE CARE?—

Because this island is your home.

—PERHAPS NOT LONG, MONKEY-CHILD. WE GATHER HERE TODAY TO SPEAK ON IT. ROAR AND GROWL AND CHEW ON IT.—

Speak on what, great Khan?

—WE KNOW SICKNESS. HAVE SEEN IT WORK, BLACK AND VILE. WE DECIDE HERE WHETHER ARASHITORA LEAVE THIS PLACE FOREVER.—

A vibration in the boy’s thoughts. An uncertainty, shaking his center, as an earthquake trembles the mightiest pillar.

… You are going to leave Shima?

—NOT YOUR BUSINESS, BOY. NOT YOUR PLACE TO QUESTION. WERE YOU NOT Y
Ō
KAI-KIN, ALREADY YOU BE FLYING.—

The sparrow looked over each of us in turn. The boy’s head followed the bird’s gaze, as if he watched us also.

There must be some among you who see as I do?

The Khan growled, low and deep and deadly.

—SEE NOTHING. YOU BLIND.—

Alone in the snow. Beneath the stares of dozens of thunder tigers, any of whom could have torn him to pieces. A thousand miles from Kitsune lands, with his tattered boots and his tattered hope. And still, the boy stood tall.

Am I?

—MONKEY-CHILDREN MAKE SICKNESS. EXPECT ARASHITORA TO MEND? AND OF ALL, THEY SEND YOU? WEAK AND BLIND AND MEWLING?—

Nobody sent me, great one, save perhaps the gods themselves.

—HEAR THEM, DO YOU?—

They have spoken to me. My grandmother has the gift of Truth. Of Sight. She said I would save the lands of Shima. End this sickness. Riding with thunder tigers at my back.

—THEN SHE AS BLIND AS YOU.—

You do not understand—

—DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CARING AND UNDERSTANDING, MONKEY-CHILD.—

A slow blink. A frown darkening that blind and vacant stare. It seemed to me the monkey-child’s mask fell away, his serenity and quiet assurance shattering upon the ice, and beneath was the face of a confused and frightened boychild, lost in a world he thought he knew.

But … you must help.

—NO PLACE FOR MUSTS HERE, SAVE MINE.—

The sparrow peered at the great Khan, trembling in the freezing chill. The boy stepped forward, the pack about him rising, growling long and deep in warning.

Please, great one. This was foretold. A child of my—

—TAKE FORETELLINGS WHEN YOU LEAVE, MONKEY-CHILD. NO PLACE FOR THEM HERE, EITHER.—

But I—

The Khan’s roar was a slap to the boy’s face. Blasting the fringe back from those sightless eyes, drenching his pallid cheeks with spittle. The Khan’s breath boiled in the freezing air, reverb shaking our bones. And at his outburst, the sparrow nestled at the boy’s shoulder finally broke, springing loose and fluttering away in a rolling tumble of feather and shrill squawking. Right into the path of another young buck by the name of Rahh. A friend of mine. As close to a brother as I would know.

Rahh’s beak closed, quick as lightning.

Snap
.

And the little white sparrow squawked no more.

No! Mikayo!

The boy turned, fell to his knees, pawed about in the snow until he found the sparrow’s broken corpse. Bright red smeared in pearlescent white. Clutching the little bundle to his chest, he made nonsense noises with his mouth, tears glittering in his eyes.

… You did not need to do that.

Rahh leaned close to the blind boy, amber stare boring a hole through the monkey-child’s skull, hackles raised in jagged threat down his spine.