Jay Kristoff: The Last Stormdancer

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. Shōgun 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 Shōgun 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 Shōgun’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.

I did not smell the blackening meat, the burning hair, the charring bones.

I did not touch the cooling remains when all was said and mercifully done.

I did not taste the ashes on my tongue.

I was not there.

I did not see, nor hear, not smell, nor touch, nor taste. Not any of it.

So how do I know, you ask?

Foolish monkey-child.

Death told me.

Ninety-nine years after the birth of the Kazumitsu Dynasty, at the beginning of a boiling summer, I watched a twenty-two-year-old woman limp to the highest summit of the Four Sisters Mountains.

Not the most spectacular of finales, I will grant you. Not one to bring audiences to their feet, rippling with vibrant applause. Not the way a story about heroes should finish. And you need not be availed of facts about how high the peaks, or how hard the trek or how the skies around those magnificent mountains were prone to rain samurai.

All this, you already know.

She was dressed in heavy black cloth and furs. Eyes hidden from the burning sun behind goggles of dark glass. A heavy cowl pulled up over her newly shorn hair.

But still I recognized her.

Seated at my Khan’s right flank, I was. Raising my head at the warning cries of our scouts, Rahh’s tail whipping in agitation. Curled there in his warmth, the embers of my first flushing still glowing faint. And beside me, he, the one I had chosen when it pressed upon me with all its insistent heat.

We do not know love as you, monkey-child.

But that is not to say we do not know love.

A summer storm was gathered above our heads, cooling showers to wash away the smoke curling ever upward from the monkey-scabs below. Thunder pressed down on us like our father’s smiles. Butterflies in our bellies. The taste of home.

And now the Lady Ami, here in my Khan’s court. No sign of Jun beside her. Confusion in my thoughts. Cool dread in my heart. What had happened, that she was here alone?

“Koh?”

Rahh looked at me, at the Lady, growl seething in his chest.

“ Be still my Khan, ” I said. “ I will seek the truth of it. ”

Down onto the snow I bounded, to stand before the Shōgun’s bride. She did not make your jabber speakings with her monkey-tongue. She did not try to tell me what had happened. But from within the folds of her travel-stained robes, she drew a thin cane of polished pine. Dried blood upon the blade. Dried blood upon the hilt.

His blood.

“Koh?”

The Lady reached inside the obi wrapped at her belt. Drew forth a small sack of dark cloth. Loosening the binds at its throat and upending it there before my widening eyes. Sandy gray spilling forth, out into the wind, snatched and scattered by the howling gale, dusted upon our faces, hers and mine. Ashes, I realized.

His ashes.

No .

The beginnings of it, a growl. Deep in my belly. Boiling and burning, monkey-child, like the brightest flame. White-hot and incendiary. Demanding release. Rumbling up through my chest, churning and seething, tearing from my throat with all the strength I could muster. A roar to shake the very stones, reverberating across the mountainside. A roar to begin avalanches, to send boulders of ice crumbling free and crashing into the canyons below, all Four Sisters trembling with the fury of it. And I raised my talons, set to seize and tear and shake like a doll of rags and bones and bloody—

“They killed Jun.”

I turned to Rahh, my eyes ablaze.

“THEY KILLED HIM.”

Rahh stood tall, hackles raised, talons crushing the stone at his feet to dust. A snarl, wings flared wide.

“Then they die. All die. Jun your friend. Your brother. We avenge. We fight.”

Rahh roared, a long, grating call, echoing amongst the peaks. A call to battle. To war. For every buck to take to the wing, to spill blood and strike fear into the hearts of—

“ No, ” I said.

Rahh cocked his head.

“No?”

My growl shook the very stones around me.

“They blind. All. Blind, Rahh. Monkey-Khan promise to end sickness. Sky grows redder by day. Sun burning brighter. Smoke thicker. They lie to us. They use. Think us beasts. Think us fools. And if we stay here? If we fight when their own Khan will not? Then fools we are.”

“ I gave word, ” Rahh growled. “ Khan’s word is law. ”

“Not stay here. Not fight.”

“You not asked to fight. Males fight. Females breed. Such is our way.”

“ Foolish way! ” I snarled.

“This again? Not speak so, no! I your Khan. You obey. Khan’s word is law!”

The bucks gathering about us now, flying in from the corners of the Four Sisters. The skies above us filled with the thunder of their wings. I recalled flying with Jun on my back. Those brief and precious days of freedom. Anything and everything possible between us. We were supposed to save the world, he and I. We were supposed to change everything. That was our destiny.

And I looked then, at the ashes scattered in the snow. Smudged upon the face of this tiny monkey-child before me, just as wounded and lost as I. And I hated her. Her and all her wretched race. Their greed and their blindness and their pride. Their faith and their dreams and their foolish hope. All of it. They deserved to burn. To suffer. To die choking in the funeral shroud of their own weaving.