Breath hissing in the caverns of their lungs, venom dripping between translucent katana teeth. They narrowed their eyes, heads tilted, leaning so close she could smell the poison and salt upon their breath, see tiny silver shards amongst the smooth gold in their eyes. They watched her watching them. And they wondered.
Ilyitch clutched the rope connecting Yukiko to the lightning tower. Wrapping his legs around the girl’s waist, he hauled them both toward the shore, desperate, half-mad with fear. The dragons watched them go, snakes before the charmer, swaying to the ocean’s pulse and the music of her mind. Ilyitch reached the island, bellowed at Yukiko. The girl slung her arm about his neck, one hand still extended toward the dragons, staring at them through half-closed eyes. Towering waves crashed against them, battering them on the stone, threatening to drag them down into cold and empty black. And with her holding tight, Ilyitch climbed the sodden rope, teeth gritted, muscle and tendon stretched to tearing, dragging them both from the sea.
The arashitora were still locked together in a screaming, tumbling frenzy. Buruu managed to finally break loose, kicking the younger thunder tiger away with his hind legs. The nomad rolled backward, landing skull first upon shattered stone. Buruu was on his feet in an instant, pounding back toward the island’s rim, eyes alight with panic. He saw Yukiko’s rope taut with weight, sawing across razored shale, coming apart strand by strand.
Two tons of blindside crashed against his ribs, spinning him up onto a sharp outcropping. Shards splintered in the impact, iridescent metal screeching beneath his furious roar. The nomad was on him in a blink, foot planted on his wing. Beak descending toward his exposed throat, shrieking like an oni fresh from the gates of the Nine Hells.
“Stop!”
Yukiko’s roar was louder than the storm above, echoing like thunder. The nomad froze, turned to the girl with a snarl. She lowered her chin, eyes narrowed, dripping floods of seawater onto the stone.
“Don’t you touch him.”
She spoke with lips and teeth and tongue, but her words echoed down the Kenning, swimming in their thoughts as burning, living things. Her hair was a smooth sheet of black draped over one half of her face, single eye glaring between closing curtains. The rain fell upon her skin as if she were stone, trickling down her cheek and beading in her lashes. Stepping forward, the boy splayed and coughing on the rocks behind her, she held up one bloody hand, the other curled into a fist. Trembling, pale and rigid, teeth clenched, a spray of rain from bloodless lips accompanying every word.
“Do you know what I am?”
The force of her bore down on the nomad like deep summer and a noonday sun. Raijin bent double and pounded his drums as if the world itself were ending. The Kenning fairly rippled with the heat of her, voice resounding in the umbra as she took another step forward. The nomad took one step back, cringing low to shattered stone, her words burning in his mind.
“I am a daughter of foxes. Slayer of Shōguns. Ender of empires. The greatest tempest Shima has ever known waits in the wings for me to call its name, and its coming will shake her foundations like the drums of the Thunder God.”
The clouds crashed above her, a halo of lightning playing in the sky over her head.
“I am a Stormdancer. And you will hear me now.”
35
CHILDREN OF THE GRAVE
The door to the apartment burst open, Hana almost screaming in fright. Akihito loomed to his feet as Jurou dragged Yoshi inside, kicked the door shut behind. Both boys were painted bloody, her brother leaning on Jurou’s shoulder, his face agony-pale.
“Gods, Yoshi!” Hana was on her feet, rushing to his side, helping him to his pile of cushions. “What happened?”
“Bar fight.” Wincing, Yoshi peeled back his bloody tunic and emptied a bottle of seppuku onto a vicious cut across his ribs. Hana tore off her kerchief, pressed it to the inch-deep slice, warm and sticky-slick beneath her fingers.
“A bar fight?”
Yoshi nodded, tipping the last of the rice wine into his mouth. “Drunken beggar monk came at me with his prayer beads. Those things are bloody sharp…”
Hana pulled back, hands on her hips. “Yoshi, can you be serious for once in your godsdamned life?”
“Now where’s the sense in that?” He took a moment to catch his breath, looked her new outfit up and down, smiled crookedly. “You scrub up prettier than springtime, sister-mine.”
Hana scowled at the flattery, fingers slick with Yoshi’s blood. She looked to Jurou, the boy obviously panicked, fresh scarlet on his hands, dark, dew-moist eyes wide with new fear. Akihito stood in the corner, silent as tombs, looking back and forth between the siblings. Finally, she turned to glare at Daken, curled atop his customary throne over the windowsill, unblinking.
“Someone tell me what the hells is going on…”
With no answers forthcoming, she reached out into the Kenning. Feeling amidst the local corpse-rats; a quick flight through a dozen sets of eyes within shouting distance of the tenement tower. And there in the distance …