Alive.
So wonderfully, perfectly, impossibly alive.
She curled her fingers in the thunder tiger’s feathers, laughing as though the world was ending, and the beast opened her beak and roared like thunder. Like a storm that would wash away everything she was and everything she’d been, all the dirt and filth and blood scabbing in the gutters, leaving her clean and whole and beautiful.
Take me back.
Kaiah glanced back at the sky-ship Kurea, amusement flickering in her mind.
– HAD YOUR FILL OF FLYING? –
No, not back to the ship. Back up to the clouds.
Hana held on tight, blinked the rain and tears from her eye.
Let’s do it again.
6
INSURRECTION
It had been eight years since Yukiko last laid eyes on Yama city.
Eight years, one mother, one father, and one lifetime ago.
Two thunder tigers soared over the metropolis, the rumble of a gathering storm and the Kurea at their backs. The Kitsune capital was a smudge on polluted riverbanks; a crust of brick and dirty tile surrounded by struggling rice paddies and long, smoking tracts of deadland. Storm clouds filed in one by one to smother the sun, refinery smoke bruising the sky.
There it is, Buruu. Home of my clan. Seat of Kitsune power in Shima.
IMPRESSIVE.
You think so?
… NOT REALLY, NO.
Well you’re in a lovely mood today.
I WAS TRYING TO BE POLITE.
Maybe stick to what you do best?
SARCASM IT IS, THEN.
They swooped lower, Hana and Kaiah beside them, watching the tiny bushimen on the walls below gathering to point and stare. Yukiko held her stomach, fighting mild nausea as the world rose up beneath them. The Fox capital was a fortress, built in the shadow of the haunted Iishi Mountains. Great walls encircled the city, topped with razor wire. The Amatsu river cut the capital in half, and a lone island sat in the middle of the flow, linked to either bank by broad bridges. Chapterhouse Yama was a pentagon of yellow stone in the island’s center, and a dozen airships hung about the sky-docks on either bank. To the south loomed the knotted tangle of the chi refinery, the Warehouse District, shrouded with grime and smog. Atop a hill on the west side of the city glowered Kitsune-jō—the mighty Fortress of the Fox.
I was eight when we left here. I remember standing at the railing and watching the people grow smaller and smaller as we flew away. Mother and Father beside me.
THEY WOULD BE PROUD OF YOU, SISTER.
How do you know that?
YOU LEFT THIS PLACE A CHILD. YOU RETURN A STORMDANCER. HOW COULD THEY NOT BE?
She smiled, put her arms around his neck.
You always know the right thing to sa—
A thunderous boom split the skies, pulling Yukiko’s thoughts back into the real. She looked down into the city, toward Chapterhouse Yama. The tower loomed on a flat spur of rock in the Amatsu river known as Last Isle. It was the symbol of Guild power in Kitsune lands. A bastion of razor wire and broken glass and dirty yellow stone.
And it was on fire.
The structure stood lopsided, smoke billowing from four of its five gates, covering the river with a soup of rolling black. Yukiko could see figures through the pall; insectoid shapes in burnished metal clashing on bridges and in dogleg alleyways on Yama’s west side. Citizens were simply fleeing across the Amatsu in floods, husbands holding wives and mothers holding children. Subterranean explosions shook the city’s spine, the popopopopop! of shuriken-throwers, the boiling hiss of flame-spitters. The smell of blood and fuel and burning meat.
She heard a shout behind, saw Akihito on the Kurea’s foredeck, waving frantically and pointing to the ship’s radio antenna. And as her belly dropped into her toes, Yukiko knew what had happened. Kaori had lived up to her word. She must have broadcast on the Kagé frequencies about the Guild rebellion. In a matter of minutes, she’d undone what had taken years, maybe decades to build. And all for the sake of hatred …
Another explosion tore through the chapterhouse, the building listing dangerously. Black smoke rose into the choking sky.
“Kaori,” Yukiko whispered. “You bitch…”
Buruu sailed through the ash and smoke as Yukiko tried to make sense of the conflict. She slipped behind Buruu’s eyes, saw dozens of Guildsmen clashing below, figures sprawled in the gutters, broken brass leaking red. So many …
I can’t tell them apart! Fly lower, Buruu. We can see— NO.
… What?
I WILL NOT DESCEND.
What the hells are you talking about? We have to help!
TOO DANGEROUS. FOR YOU AND THEM.
The rebels? You’re not making—
NOT THE GUILDSMEN, YUKIKO. THE ONES INSIDE YOU.
Yukiko’s hand went to her stomach, the sparks of warmth gathered there.
This isn’t about them!
EVERYTHING YOU DO IS ABOUT THEM.
Oh my GODS, don’t start going all male on me now.
I AM EQUIPPED FOR LITTLE ELSE.