“I’m not sure I could do that,” Yukiko finally said.
“You drink it. It’s easy. And you’ll still be all right … later, I mean. If you want to start a real family.”
“Real family?”
“With a husband. Someone who loves you.”
“Will they be any less real, if I do it alone?”
“Why would you want to?” A slow frown darkened Michi’s brow. “They’re Hiro’s get. He tried to murder you. Why would you want to bring his children into the world?”
“They’d be mine too.”
“Yukiko, you’re sixteen years old.”
“Seventeen,” she sighed. “It was my birthday last week.”
“Oh.” A weak smile. “Blessings of the Maker to you, then.”
Yukiko smiled back, weaker still. “My thanks, sister.”
“You are my sister, you know. You’re blood to me. I’d die for you, Yukiko.”
“Gods, don’t do that…”
Michi laughed softly. “I’m in no hurry, surely. I need to finish my book, for starters. The godsdamned things don’t write themselves.”
“I love you, Michi.” Yukiko squeezed the girl’s fingers. “And it’s not like the thought hasn’t crossed my mind. Everyone has their own choices, and nobody can say if that’s right or wrong. But I can feel them. Like two candles burning brighter by the day. I don’t think I could make that stop. It’s not about right or wrong. It’s just about me. Does that make sense?”
“I suppose it might,” Michi smiled. “If I were a stormdancer. But I’m just little me.”
“There’s nothing little about you, sister. You stand taller than mountains.”
“You might think differently, when the Earthcrusher and the gaijin come. When we look over Yama’s walls and see iron and smoke all the way to the horizon, you might want for something more than one girl and her chainswords.”
“If there were one girl in all the world I’d want beside me, it’d be you.”
“Talking to that Inquisitor today, the way he spoke to you … Something else is coming. I feel it in my bones. We don’t need an army of me. We need an army of you.”
Yukiko shook her head. “I’m nothing without Buruu. And to win this war, we don’t need an army of Yukikos. We need an army of thunder tigers.”
“A pity there’s only two arashitora left in Shima. Although Buruu and Kaiah are male and female. Where do little thunder tigers come from? Maybe we get some romantic music—”
“Oh my gods,” Yukiko whispered.
“… What?”
“My gods, I’m an idiot…”
Yukiko turned to Michi and embraced her, grinning to the eyeteeth.
“What?” Michi blinked.
“Where do baby thunder tigers come from?”
“How the hells should I know? Eggs?”
Yukiko dashed from the room without another word, the percussion of bare feet on mahogany loud enough to wake the rest of the guest wing. Michi was left alone in the gloom, confusion and concern vying for control of her expression.
Crawling into bed ten minutes later, there was still no clear winner.
*
The groan of a storm wind and the scent of faint sweat woke her in the dark, heart lodged somewhere in her throat without quite knowing why. Hana sat up in the gloom, squinting at the figure on the edge of her bed. He was outlined by lantern glow filtered through rice-paper walls—shoulders broad as palace eaves, biceps carved from solid granite.
“Akihito?” she whispered.
“Hana.”
“What time is it?”
His voice was sweet and dark as sugardew. “Time I stopped lying to myself.”
“About what?”
“About why you look at me the way you do.”
Sitting up straighter, she felt her pulse coming quicker, a stutter-step beat beneath bare skin. She was acutely aware of how thin her silk nightshift was, what the chill was doing to her body. Goose bumps all over. Her first thought was to fold her arms, cover her breasts, but the sight of him, the realization of what his presence might mean chased that thought away. Replaced it with butterflies.
“You’ve been looking at me, too,” she whispered.
“… I shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m too old for you.”
“I’m eighteen next month.”
“You’re still a girl, for gods’ sakes.”
“You can change that…”
He looked at her then, and she could feel his stare as she sat up straighter, pushing out what little there was of her chest, wetting her lips slowly with the tip of her tongue. She leaned forward, the loose collar of her nightshift slipping down over her shoulder.
“Come here,” she breathed.
“I shouldn’t.”
“Then why are you in my bedroom?”
“I don’t know…”
She swallowed hard, mouth dry as ashes. And then she drew herself out from under her blankets, ever so slow. She prowled across a plain of tumbled silk, his features lit with the soft pink glow of her iris. Her face inches from his now, lips just a feather’s breadth apart.