And winter.
She’d missed it. Tangled in fears of Earthcrushers and gaijin hordes. Blinded by the storm clouds over the Seven Isles, her own traumas, failing to notice the feather trail he’d left scattered about the gardens. Speaking not a word. A tiger’s cunning. An eagle’s pride.
Buruu roared, echoing amongst the thunderclaps, the day-bright salvos of lightning. And Yukiko raised her hands into the air and screamed, laughing like a lunatic as he soared through the deluge, wings spread in all their glory—a beauty she’d almost forgotten. Lost eons ago on the Thunder Child beneath her father’s blade. Lost again in the stinking pit of Kigen arena, sundered by a madman’s pride. But no man or blade was here to touch him now. Just the Storm God and his children, bellowing triumph across tempest skies. Bloodied and torn, but beautiful. Beautiful and whole and perfect, as he’d been in the moment she first saw him, touching his mind for the first time, his voice as deafening as the peals of thunder crashing through the skies around her.
WHO ARE YOU? he’d asked.
Yukiko, she’d replied.
WHAT ARE YOU?
She flooded his mind with warmth, with love, relief and joy and the thrill of victory. Everything would be all right now. She knew it. As surely as she knew herself.
You’re beautiful, Buruu. You’re BEAUTIFUL!
He reared up in the storm, turned on the Everstorm pack, eyes ablaze. And the sky was filled with his voice, as loud as Raijin’s drums, echoing in the spaces between the rain and the thrumming halls of their hearts.
I AM THE GET OF SKAA, KHAN-SON, EXILED AND NOW RETURNED. I AM A CHILD OF EVERSTORM, AND I CLAIM ITS RULE THIS DAY, IN THE EYES OF FATHER RAIJIN, AT THE SEAT OF HIS FATHER, SUSANO-ō.
I AM HE WHO WAS ROAHH, THEN KINSLAYER, NOW REFORGED ANEW IN BLOOD AND THUNDER.
I AM KHAN.
Thunder rocked the skies; the triumphant bellow of the Storm God’s son.
I.
AM.
BURUU.
30
PURIFICATION
Weeksend.
Rain spattered on corrugated roofs, a stutter-step beat filling the gutted warehouse district with the ring of hollow sticks on empty drums. Yoshi trudged through Downside, the stench of old smoke and char strung heavy in the air. He could hear the rhythms of Kigen Bay under the downpour’s heartbeat, smell the stink of rot beneath the fire’s leavings.
The satchel of Yakuza money slapped against his back as he walked, and he tossed fistfuls of coin at the blacklung beggars as he passed. The tsurugi sword was a comforting threat beneath his oilskin cloak, the bulk of the near empty iron-thrower nudging the small of his back. The Scorpion Children’s money could have paid for some fancy digs in an Upside bedhouse, but he’d felt like sleeping rough. Like they used to back in the day, when every copper bit was a blessing, every meal a stroke of fortune. Before the entire world went mad.
Him, Hana, and Jurou.
Yoshi reached beneath his goggles, wiped at his eyes. The memory of the Shinshi’s bride, the terror on her face as he’d picked up her babe …
“Don’t you touch my son!”
He walked. Past refugees huddled in Kigen’s burned-out shells, through crumpled, dirty streets and shadows of broken sky-spires. A motor-rickshaw roared faintly in the distance, his boots slapping the ash-choked floor. Figures brushed past him beneath filthy paper parasols, hungry eyes stared from dead-end alley mouths. But the blade showing just beneath his cloak and the dozen corpse-rats following him told even the most desperate folk that he wasn’t a meal to be swallowed in one bite.
Head down. Shoulders slumped. Unthinking. Following his feet as the press of people grew thicker, sewer children spreading out about him, scampering through the riots’ leavings. He didn’t know where he was walking. What he was doing. Only the woman’s face as he hoisted her son from the crib. Staring as if he were some kind of monster.
As if?
A phantom rising unbidden in his mind. Messy bangs hanging over dark, moist eyes. Lips soft as pillows, pressed sweetly against his own. And the ache, gods, the ache in his chest …
I got them for you, Princess.
Fist clenched beneath his cloak.
I got them.
So why didn’t he feel better? Why didn’t it go away? He could still smell the blood on his hands. Still hear the words of the thunder tiger in his mind.
YOU WILL FIND NO PEACE IN IT. THE STAINS NEVER WASH OFF. I KNOW.
Never wash off …
Jurou was still dead. The hole in him still empty. And his baby sister? The one person who mattered in all the world? He’d left her alone with the weight of a clan on her shoulders.