Jay Kristoff: The Last Stormdancer

But we know kinship. We know pack. We know the warmth of another’s body against our own when the winter bites deep and the cold winds moan. And in the days after my family fell to the sickening, I had learned what it was to be alone.

Truly alone.

YOU MAY TOUCH.

The boy stepped forward, head tilted, reaching out with trembling hands toward my heat and sound. I could feel his heart beating through the thin walls of his chest. I knew it pumped with fear, despite his talk of prophecy and destiny and other such foolishness. Standing naked before the beast he was, sightless and small. But as he touched my cheek, I saw the fear in him melt, slowly, by inches. His hands exploring my face. Down my beak, black as moonless midnight, fading through to gray at a tip that could puncture steel. As his fingertips brushed my closed eyelids, I tensed and growled, and he withdrew not for fear of me, but out of concern. I could feel his presence in my mind, even as I felt his hands return to my brow, my temples, my throat, his thoughts as gentle as his touch. I had not known such sensation. Nothing so careful or … kind? No room in my world for a moment such as this. And in it, I felt the wound left by my kin’s passing begin to ache …

ENOUGH .

I pulled away, snorting, claws tearing at the frost. The boy’s eyes were open, and tears were frozen upon his cheeks, and his smile was bright as the sun.

You are … beautiful, Koh.

BEAUTIFUL TO MONKEYS? THINK THIS FLATTERY?

Not flattery. Just truth.

A growl deep within my chest, ruffling my feathers and shaking the snow from my wings. The boy wiped salted ice from his cheek, the mask of determination slipping back into place.

Kigen city is southeast of here. Perhaps a day as the thunder tiger flies.

THEN CLIMB ABOARD. NO TIME TO WASTE. NEED NOT WARN TO NOT LOOK DOWN.

The boy walked forward, prodding the snow with his lacquered cane, feeling about my wings for the briefest of moments before he scrabbled atop me, light and only a little graceless. It was a strange sensation, the weight of him up there. I had not flown with anyone on my back before. My muscles tensed, wings flinching as he found his balance, my tail lashing side to side. His arms closed about my neck and I almost balked, blood rushing beneath my skin. But ever I could feel him in my mind, just as frightened as I, trembling just as deep, all his certainty eroded at the heat radiating from my fur, the taste of ozone in back of his tongue, the crackle of infant lightning across the breadth of my feathers.

Clumsy as first-time lovers we were. And though nothing of love lay between us, I could not recall a time I had felt as close to another as I felt to him in that moment.

YOU ARE WELL?

My voice in his mind, killing the uncomfortable silence between us.

I am well.

THEN HOLD ONTO ME, MONKEY-CHILD.

My wings spread, twenty feet, flickering with pale blue-white. His skin prickling with adrenaline, echoing in his thoughts. His arms about my neck, squeezing tight.

A swift breath before the plunge.

HOLD TIGHT.

Then flight.

Lord Tatsuya stood in his command tent, bathed in the bloody light of burning chi-lamps, staring at the map before him. He was decked in traditional samurai armor—an elaborately embossed suit of black iron, commissioned for him on his eighteenth naming day by his dear-departed Lord and father. Katana and wakizashi at his waist, a braid of long dark hair slung over one shoulder. Dawn waited two hours distant, but the battle ahead was already playing out in his mind, clear as a portrait hung upon the palace walls. The ring of steel. The smell of blood.

Soon.

Four days had passed since his father’s funeral, and already, the war had begun. After a bloody skirmish in the Broken Hills, his brother’s forces had retreated north, refusing to engage Tatsuya’s armies in the open field. Riku’s men were now almost boxed in on the slopes of the Junsei river valley. To the west lay the Four Sisters Mountains. To the north and east, the rushing flow of the Junsei herself. Though Riku had the high ground, there was also nowhere for him to run if the battle went badly (which, Maker and simple mathematics willing, it most certainly would), save for a single bridge spanning the Junsei, perhaps a mile east of their encampment. The Bear seemed caught between the hunter and the trap.

“What will you do, brother-mine?” Tatsuya wondered aloud.

One the four generals gathered about the table—a grizzled old wardog called Ukyo—tapped his finger on the map.

“If he has wisdom, he will remain on the high ground and make us pay dearly before we reach him. We may have numerical advantage, but numbers cannot wield blades.”

“My brother is no strategist on open ground,” the Bull said. “He will break for his keep in Blackstone province. Turtle there and make overtures to the other clanlords for aid.”

“There is no path north through the Four Sisters. And if he orders retreat across the Junsei, his forces will be bottlenecked on that bridge. Most will be slaughtered before they can cross.”

“As I said,” Tatsuya murmured. “No strategist. Riku has a head for duels and drunken diplomacy, not open warfare. He should have killed me when he had the chance.”

One of Tatsuya’s samurai stalked into the tent, armor clanking with an off-key tune, gleaming in the flickering light. He stopped before the council table, covered his fist and bowed low, the red tassel on his helm near touching the earth at his feet.

“Forgiveness, Lord Tatsuya. An emissary to see you.”

A raised eyebrow. “The Bear sends overture?”

“Not from Lord Riku, great Lord. The emissary is of the Lotus Guild.”

The generals about Tatsuya murmured, scowls running deep. Tatsuya himself stroked his chin, his face that of man confronted with an angry viper in his wedding bed.

He had been wondering when the Lotus Guildsmen would decide to place their bets. Tatsuya’s father had warned him often about their strange brotherhood, their arcane arts. Fueled by the wondrous chi—in turn derived from the blood lotus flowers from which the brethren drew their name—the machines the Guild created were wonders, to be sure. Harvester machines to bolster the productivity of breadbasket provinces. Generators providing power for everyday life. Railways and crude lighter-than-air ships the Lotusmen promised would revolutionize travel in Shima. Maker’s breath, even Tatsuya’s own supply lines were made up of motor-rickshaw convoys provided by the chi-mongers. But the wealth they were accumulating, the power such wealth brought them … any ruler of Shima would be right to dread getting into bed with them for fear of being suffocated as he slept.

Tatsuya turned to his lead general.

“Ukyo-san, ensure the men are ready to march. My brother may seek escape across the Junsei under cover of darkness. If he does so, he must pay in blood.”

“Hai!” The old general bowed, led his commanders from the tent.

Tatsuya turned to the samurai guard. “Send the Guildsman in.”

A low bow. The song of oiled armor, heavy tread. The samurai exited the tent, reappeared a few moments later with three other guards, a fourth figure corralled between them.

The Lotusman was clad in a suit of heavy brown leather, riveted with thick brass plates. It wore a sealed helm, some kind of breathing contraption made of snaking metal tubes strapped over its nose and mouth. A device of counting beads and transistors and wires was affixed to its chest, clicking and chirping and shuddering. Goggles of blood-red glass covered its eyes, bulbous and facetted. Tatsuya imagined it the gutter-born offspring of woman and wasp, clad in its brass and leather suit to hide its hideousness.