Jay Kristoff: The Last Stormdancer

Condemned prisoners choose their last meals with less care than the Lotusman used to choose his next words.

“That you give us anything at all is truly pleasing, great Lord…”

“This talk of a licensing system. Quality assurance. In this I see wisdom. But you will not build your refineries in my cities. Keep your tarworks and smokestacks out in the wilds where I need not inhale the stench. Nor will I help you ‘cleanse’ any of my citizens for a harmless accident of birth. And I will require approval on any further military projects your Artificers engage in, before the work begins. It is illegal for a commoner to carry a blade longer than a knife in these lands. I cannot fathom how your masters consider it acceptable to be building warships and motorized swords without the Shōgun’s permission.”

“I will … need to report these requests to my superiors.”

Tatsuya’s eyes narrowed. “Requests?”

“Commands, great Lord.”

“We have time. The Bear has nowhere to run—once your sappers blow the Junsei bridge, of course. I will consider this demolition ample apology for your threats against a son of the Kazumitsu line. Memories of your temerity will sink into the Junsei with the broken stone.”

“I will give the order to blow the charges as soon as they are in place, great Lord.”

“Good.” As much warmth lay in the Bull’s smile as in a drift of snow. “I look forward to hearing your superior’s response.”

“… Hai.”

The Lotusman bowed low, backing away with his comrade. Out of the tent and out of Tatsuya’s sight, leaving the young Lord in possession of the growling sword. The Bull’s gaze followed their departure, drifting finally down to the weapon idling quietly in his palm. His murmur was soft as bloodstained silk.

“Lowborn gardeners. Thinking to stake a claim in the rulership of this nation?”

He gunned the chainkatana throttle, tongue tingling with the kiss of blue-black smoke.

“Not while I draw breath.”

The monkey-child scab lay below us, sundered by the flow of three sluggish brown rivers. A seething sprawl, little nests of stone and clay and glass, stacked upon each other with no order or reason. A stench drifted up from its nethers, a blue-black haze reminding me of the stinking mouthfuls of black and blood my family coughed as they died, mixed with rot and rust and spice and excrement. I shied away, instinct bidding me turn and fly, fly away from this rats’ nest and the sea of pink and mewling flesh rolling within it.

What is wrong, friend Koh?

NOT YOUR FRIEND, MONKEY-CHILD. WISE TO REMEMBER THIS.

If you will not be mine, I am still yours. That your thoughts are troubled troubles me.

SCAB BELOW US. YOU LIVE LIKE THIS. CRAWLING OVER ONE ANOTHER LIKE MAGGOTS ON CORPSES.

We call them cities.

NOT CARE WHAT YOU CALL.

Do you see the palace? It will be a grand building. Beautiful.

ALL LOOK SAME TO ME. HOLE IN GROUND. MONKEY-CHILDREN EVERYWHERE. NOISE AND STINK AND ROT AND DEATH. THIS PLACE WRETCHED.

Though it shamed me, I felt fear swell at the sight of all those monkey-children, innumerable and hungry. The same fear my Khan must have known—the fear of a predator in the face of an army of ants. No matter how big the tiger, how sharp the bear’s claws, a million mouths can eat the largest of meals.

Friend Koh—

NOT FRIEND!

Great Koh, I will know the palace when I see it.

CANNOT SEE, FOOLISH BOY. BLIND. WEAK. MEWLING. WRE—

I can see if you let me. I can see through your eyes.

I growled, long and low, gliding in wide, aimless circles above that filth-choked pit. The thought of the boy peering out from behind my eyes was an unwelcome one. A frightful one. All this new to me. I had never left the Four Sisters before and now, here I was, some mad, blind boychild astride my back, buoyed by some insane notion of prophecy. A city full of lice below me, probably the same source of sickness that killed my kin. And I was about to dive down into it?

You will not even know I am there, Koh.

THEN WHY NOT JUST TAKE? WHY YOU ASK?

The boy pressed his hands to my feathers, stroked as gentle as a cub’s first breath.

Friends ask.

I growled again. Ashamed of my fear. Ashamed I had flown all this way and balked at the last. And so I breathed deep, heart all a-thunder against my ribs. Nodding assent.

DO IT, THEN. DO AND BE DONE.

I felt nothing, just as he promised; no sensation of intrusion or invasion. But I heard the boy gasp, felt his breath come quicker, a warm spice of joy and thrill in his thoughts spilling out into my own. I realized this would have been the first he had seen of the world from the air. The first moment he had witnessed all there was laid out below him, stretched from the end of one horizon to the other. The vastness of it all, the tiny lives and tiny moments caught beneath the burning sun, all washing away between the permanence of sky and earth.

All.

It is … beautiful.

SO YOU SAY ABOUT EVERYTHING, BOY.

To one who lives in the dark, even the tiniest spark is a blessing.

He ran his hands down my neck, a blinding smile in his thoughts.

Thank you for this, great Koh.

PALACE. YOU SEE?

I see it. The building surrounded by gardens. There on the eastern slopes.

HOLD ON THEN. TIME AGAINST US. SKYMEET SPEAKING, EVEN NOW. MUST BE SWIFT.

I dipped my wings, dropping as a stone, feeling the boy’s fear and exhilaration, fingers sunk to the knuckles in the feathers at my neck, a cry boiling inside his belly and finally spilling up over his teeth. A whoop of joy, snatched from his mouth by the rushing wind, lingering long enough to spill over into me. I cannot explain it. Perhaps it was the link of thought between us. Perhaps I had forgotten the simple joy of the skies. But somehow, if only for a moment, his joy became mine.

We swooped into the thing the boy named palace—a towering nest of stone stained by the blue-black pall lingering in the streets. Gardens with a vague and sickly air, a brook babbling somewhere amidst the graying green. Monkey-samurai with metal skins and shiny sticks rushing from the surrounding walls, from within the structure itself, aiming their pointed steel twigs in our direction. I roared once in warning as we came in to land, gravel crunching beneath my talons. Wings spread, hackles raised in threat, tail lashing as a whip before frightened livestock. And I felt the boy in my mind again, calm as summer dawn, filling me with the same.

Fear nothing, great Koh. I will speak. They will listen.

The boy slipped off my back, spoke with loud and clear voice. I could not understand the shaping of his words. Twisting and snarled in my ears; the language of bleating goats and filth-clad hogs. He spoke long, back and forth with the little samurai, voices rising and falling. It seemed the boy grew distressed for a time, thoughts filled with pleading, but finally some understanding filled the place where the jabber-words had rung. And the boy fell still, watching through my eyes as a handful of the men in their flimsy tin suits slipped back inside the nest, leaving us beneath the watchful stare of perhaps two dozen more.

WHAT HAPPEN?

The Shōgun is dead. He died four days ago.

NO NEW MONKEY-KHAN?

His sons do battle as we speak for the right to sit on the throne. Civil war is raging to the north, my friend. Brother against brother.

STRONGEST RULE. THRONES BOUGHT WITH BLOOD. OLD KHAN MUST DIE FOR NEW KHAN TO RISE. FOR US AND YOU.