The Last Stormdancer (3 page)

* GET OFF OUR MOUNTAIN, MONKEY-CHILD. *

She was my friend …

* FLY WITH US THEN. *

Rahh raised his claws, intent on seizing the boy and ripping him skyward. Rumbling growls amidst the roll of thunder above. And as the talons of my brother who was not my brother descended, I called to him in our own tongue, my voice enough to stay his hand.

“Wait.”

Rahh fell still. Glanced at me with eyes the shade of sunflowers and murder.

“He laid his stick on my back.”

I stepped forward, talons sinking deep into the snow.

“Let me teach him.”

Rahh looked to the Khan looming at our backs, blinking in question. This was not my place to speak. Let alone to demand. But the old beast must have assented (as he often did in those days), for the brother who was not my brother inclined his head, backed away from the boy with his bloody palmful of broken sparrow.

“
Teach him well,
” he said
.

And seizing the monkey-child by his shoulders, spreading my wings wide, I sprang into the sky.

*   *   *

Lady Ami knelt in a vast antechamber of the House of Passing, her sister Mai beside her. The roof arched forty feet above her head, long silken amulets of perfect white running ceiling to floor. The room was lit with a thousand fragrant candles, also the color of death; white as newborn snow. Two dozen maidservants gathered about her, heads pressed to floorboards, hands clasped in prayer.

The sisters were motionless as statues. Faces painted bone-pale, thick kohl about their lashes. Hair bound in coils and braids, twelve-layered robes of mourning-black dragging them earthward. They were beauties among your kind, or so I am told. Perfect as the first flowers of spring. Born of the same womb, one year apart, mirrored reflections of each other in dark, still water.

Brides of the Sh
ō
gun’s sons—sisters wed to brothers, which I suppose makes a kind of sense, in so far as anything you monkey-children do makes sense. And hanging heavy in the air between Ami and her sibling, along with the perfume of burning candles and the hymns of beggar monks praying for the dead Sh
ō
gun’s soul, lay the knowledge that all that stood between either of them and the title of First Lady of Shima was the death of the other’s husband.

Lady Mai spoke first. Utterly motionless, save her lips.

“Your Lord Tatsuya looked unwell this morning, dear sister.”

Lady Ami was still as stone. Unblinking. Almost unbreathing. “My husband is well, dear sister. Considering circumstances. Though I must say, your Lord Riku looks a picture of health.”

“He does, does he not?”

Ami nodded slightly. “One would think the Bear would appear a touch paler, considering the forces my noble husband has gathered to his side.”

“Lord Tatsuya has proven himself most effective in the application of bribery and threats, to be certain. A pity he was not courageous enough to simply end the matter by duel and spare us all the horrors of civil war.”

“Horrific for some,” Ami nodded. “Considering our forces outnumber yours almost two to one. And yet Lord Riku barely musters a sweat. Most admirable.”

Lady Mai’s smile was pretty as sunset. “Perhaps my Lord and husband knows it is not simply numbers that win battles, dear sister. That skill counts for more by half.”

“One would think,” Ami smiled in return, “such knowledge would make him sweat all the more.”

A hollow chuckle, drifting off into a deathly hiss. “Always so clever, little sister.”

“And still you ever ask to dance.”

“A pity the same cannot be said of the Bull?” Mai glanced sideways at her sibling.

Muscle clenched at Lady Ami’s jaw. She blinked once. Twice.

“No riposte?” Mai whispered. “Does it cut you so deep that Tatsuya-sama spends so little time in your bedchamber? I would have thought you accustomed to the idea by now.”

“You dare…” Ami breathed.

“Tell me, if your Lord and husband does murder mine and do away with me besides, will the arrangement our parents made remain intact, do you think? Or will the Bull supplant you with the one he truly loves? Whomever that might be this week?”

Ami licked once at trembling lips. Palms pressed flat to her thighs. She glanced at the maidservants behind her, breath strangled in her lungs. Tatsuya’s latest favorite, a tiny slip of a thing named Chiyoko was watching the back of her head, turning her eyes to the floor as the Lady met her gaze.

Lady Mai finally glanced at her sister, dark lips curled in a smile.

“By the by,” she said brightly. “You will be an aunt soon.”

The doors to the Chamber of Passing opened wide, the volume of the mourning hymns rising. Beyond the threshold, their husbands awaited. Lord Tatsuya and Lord Riku, Bull and Bear, swathed in heavy armor of ink-black, surrounded by a legion of samurai and beggar monks. Beyond them, carried by a multitude of hunched servants, the old Sh
ō
gun’s body awaited on his funeral bier.

Lady Mai smiled at her husband, rose with practiced grace and drifted to his side. Lord Riku was somber as occasion would dictate, yet still leaned down to kiss her brow, place a comforting hand upon her midriff. Lady Ami watched the pair—mirror to her and Tatsuya, and yet nothing alike at all.

Her husband glanced at her, still kneeling on the floor. Still reeling from the blow. Hand pressed to her empty belly. Blinking faster than the tears could muster.

“Ami-chan,” Tatsuya said with faint annoyance. “Come.”

Lady Ami breathed deep. Stood slow. Walked to her husband’s side. If she noted the Bull’s stare lingering on Chiyoko and the other maidservants behind her, she gave no sign.

The procession trudged from the House of Passing, down a vast flight of stone stairs and into the Kigen streets. The people were a throng, a crush, lining the Palace Way. Each citizen dressed in black, head bowed, burning sticks of incense held in clasped hands. Those few with the courage to look at the royal entourage as they passed noted each of the Sh
ō
gun’s sons were as stone, hands on their katana hilts, eyes downturned. The Lady Ami was pale as death itself, thin lips pressed into a bloodless line. And though it was improper to show emotion at an event such as this, the young woman wiped once at her eyes, as if brushing away errant tears.

And the Lady Mai?

She walked beside Lord Riku, palms crossed over her belly, her face as rigid and cold as a mask. But every now and then, she would glance from the cobbles beneath her feet to her sister walking at the coffin’s left-hand side. To the once-perfect kohl painted around her sibling’s eyes, smudged now with sorrow.

And she would smile.

*   *   *

The boy hung from my claws, limp and bewildered as we circled ever higher. I held him beneath his arms, talons not yet piercing his flesh. He did not struggle as most other monkey-children I had seen did in his predicament. He did not plead in his jabber-tongue nor buck in my grip. He simply clutched the broken body of the dead sparrow in one hand, lashes crusted with frozen tears.

This makes no sense.

His voice in my mind again, warm as summer breeze.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

I snorted, circling higher still, the Four Sisters laid out below us, snow-clad and beautiful.

WHAT YOU EXPECT, MONKEY-CHILD? BE STORMDANCER? BE HERO? LUCKY SKYMEET NOT TEAR YOU LIMB FROM LIMB.

I care nothing for heroes. I care for the sickness. It took my mother. My father.

A chill in my belly.

And I am supposed to stop it.

SUPPOSED?

It was foretold. It is my destiny.

FOOLISHNESS.

Though he could see only darkness, the boy’s gaze was affixed on the ground far below; the vista of mountain and earth, of stone and soil and green stretching all the way to the horizon. He opened his bloody palm, let the sparrow’s body fall, spinning and tumbling end over end until it became only a speck, and from there, nothing at all.

He spoke then. Monkey-words I did not understand. Perhaps a song. Perhaps a prayer.

We ascended.

THIS SICKNESS YOU SPEAK. HAS SPREAD FAR?

The boy’s eyes were downturned and vacant. His body shivering from altitude’s deathly kiss. He was light as air, feeble and soft. Numbed to his core. I shook him once to regain his attentions.

ANSWER, MONKEY-CHILD!

… It has spread far. It does not just kill people, as I said. All the great spirit beasts suffer and die from it. Phoenix and henge and kappa and dragon. Arashitora alone seem immune.

IT IS COUGHING? BLOODY BREATH AND DYING?

The boy nodded.

My kind call it blacklung … But how could you know the symptoms?

MY KIND NOT IMMUNE, MONKEY-CHILD. ARASHITORA SICKENING ALSO. MANY OF US. MY MOTHER, FATHER, BROTHER, ALL GONE. OUR EGGS GROWING THINNER. BREAKING IN WOMB OR BENEATH THEIR MOTHER’S WEIGHT.

Then … why would your Khan not help? Why did you kill my friend?

KHAN FEAR MONKEY-CHILDREN. FEAR MACHINES. HE OLD. NOT UNDERSTAND NEW WAYS. CHANGING WORLD.

But you do?

NO.

Thunder rolled in the skies about us, sending a thrill through my belly. The voice of Raijin, the Thunder God, father to all arashitora. Telling me not to be afraid.

BUT WANT TO.

You … you will help me, then?

I circled lower, descending through the freezing squalls, down to the broken crags at the Four Sisters’ edge. I dropped the monkey-child into a thick drift of snow, alighted beside him, sinking deep into sharp chill. My breath roiling in the air between us. My eyes upon his, sightless though they were, seeing more than the leader of my race ever would. I had lost my family to this sickening. And though the Khan might bid us simply leave Shima and its woes behind, though I had no words at the time for concepts like “forever” or “extinction,” I found myself unwilling, in that tiny, frozen moment, to lose my home along with my kin. Not without at least knowing why.

This seemed important.

This
boy
seemed important.

I HELP, MONKEY-CHILD.

And your friends? Your kin?

ARASHITORA NOT FIGHT MONKEY-CHILD BATTLES FOR YOU.

What if we were to convince my people to help also? Would you fight beside us?

CANNOT SAY. PERHAPS WE FIGHT. BUT ONCE KHAN SPEAKS, HIS WORD IS LAW. MUST RETURN BEFORE SKYMEET IS DONE. A DAY. TWO AT MOST. OR ELSE, WILL BE TOO LATE.

The boy smiled, grinned like a fool.

Grandmother was right …

KNOW NOT GRANDMOTHER.

She spoke a prophecy, a vision—

NOT CARE ABOUT VISION. NOT CARE ABOUT YOU. NOT FRIENDS, BOY. NOT THINK YOU STORMDANCER. NOT DO THIS FOR YOU. DO THIS FOR MY KIND. MY CUBS, YET UNBORN.

You have a bride? I did not know. Do you wish to tell her—

BRIDE? FOOLISH. SEE NOTHING.

I felt him, then. A frown upon his face, reaching out through the frost-clad space between us and slipping inside my mind. The strangest of sensations; sharing a room as vast as reckoning with another mind, wide as the dawning sky. Touching. Overlapping. A sense of him in me, and me in him. Unlike anything I had ever known. And after a moment, the frown smoothed from his brow, incredulity settling there instead, blind eyes searching mine as if he saw me true.

My gods. You’re … female …

TROUBLES YOU, MONKEY-CHILD?

Not troubling, no. It is just—

NEVER RIDDEN FEMALE BEFORE?

Amusement rippling in my mind. Spilling into his.

In truth, I have not, great one.

FIRSTS, THEN. FOR BOTH OF US. NOW, WHERE WE GO?

The Sh
ō
gun’s palace is in Kigen city. He is the leader of my people. Like your Khan.

I looked at the Four Sisters behind me, the Aerie of my race. The Skymeet therein, aloft and aloof and afraid. What would happen to me when I returned? What shape would my Khan’s displeasure take? My kind did not allow females to fly free. Risk themselves in battles. Such was our way. Had always been our way. But there was change coming. All with eyes to see knew it …

HOPE NOT, MONKEY-CHILD.

If we visit the Sh
ō
gun, I can tell him of this sickness. How it spreads through his subjects and all the beasts and birds of the sky—

HE NOT KNOW?

In my experience, those who live with their heads in the clouds seldom look at the ground beneath their feet.

WHY HE LISTEN?

Because we have destiny on our side, my friend.

The boy stood there in the snow, ice on his brows and the soft down at his cheeks. He seemed a tiny, lonely thing, then. Far from home and all he knew. Yet still that certainty loomed within him—the pillar of belief that all this was preordained. A faith unswerving. A conviction, perhaps, that would change the world …

I do not know your name …

MY KIND CALL ME KOH.

Does it have meaning?

KOH IS ARASHITORA WORD FOR CHANGING OF SEASONS.

I like that.

I CARE NOT.

May I ask something of you, Koh?

ASK.

May I touch your face?

My eyes narrowed, wings flaring, wisps of lightning crawling across my feathers. A growl rumbled in my chest, shivering the snow upon my fur, spilling to the ground in rolling white flurries.

… WHY?

The winter sparrow. The one your brethren … killed. She was more important to me than you can know. My gift is called the Kenning in my mother’s tongue. And through it, I can share not only a beast’s thoughts, but also their senses. Little Mikayo …