The beast emerged from the shadows, feathers stained black with blood. It stalked toward her and lowered its head, growl building in its throat. Yukiko groped toward her tantō, pawing through the muck and sodden leaves for the blade as her eyesight dimmed. The darkness beckoned, arms open wide, promising an end to all of her fear. To be with her brother again. To leave this dying island and its poisoned sky behind. To lie down and finally sleep after a decade of hiding who and what she was.
She closed her eyes and wished she were safe and warm at home, nestled in her blankets, the air tinged blue-black with the smoke from her father’s pipe. The beast opened its beak and roared, a hurricane scream swallowing the light and memories.
Darkness fell completely.
2 Hachiman’s Chosen
It was on a sweltering morning two weeks earlier when Yoritomo-no-miya, Seii Taishōgun of the Shima Isles, emerged from his bedchamber, yawned and declared that he wanted a griffin.
His elderly major-domo, Tora Hideo, fell perfectly still. His calligraphy brush hovered over the arrest warrants piled on the table in front of him. Blood lotus smoke curled up from the bone pipe in his left hand, and Hideo squinted through the haze at his master. Even after seven years as Yoritomo’s chief minister, there were still days when he found his Shōgun impossible to read. To laugh, or not to laugh? That was the question.
“My Lord?” he finally ventured.
“You heard. A griffin.”
“My Lord refers to a statue of some kind? A monument, perhaps, to celebrate
the bicentennial of the glorious Kazumitsu Dynasty?”
“No. A real one.”
One traitorous eyebrow rose toward Hideo’s hairline.
“But, my Lord . . .” The old man cleared his throat. “Thunder tigers are extinct.”
Dirty opalescent light filtered through the sitting room’s tall bay doors. A vast garden stretched out in the palace grounds below, its trees stunted and sickly despite the multitude of servants who toiled beneath them every day. Faint birdsong drifted from the greenery like mist; the mournful cries of a legion of sparrows. The birds were imported monthly from the north at the Shōgun’s request, their wings kept clipped so they couldn’t flee the reek.
The sky hung heavy with a pall of fumes, sealing in the day’s already oppressive heat. As the Ninth Shōgun of the Kazumitsu Dynasty stalked to the balcony and looked out over his capital, a sky-ship rose from Kigen harbor and started its long trek north, trailing a suffocating plume of blue-black exhaust.
“The cloudwalkers say otherwise,” he declared. Hideo sighed inwardly, placed his calligraphy brush aside with care. Smoke curled up from his pipe to the ceiling; a vast dome of obsidian and pearl reminiscent of the once-clear night sky. The silken sokutai robe he wore was abominably heavy, layer upon layer of gold and scarlet, and he cursed again at having to wear the confounded thing in this heat. The old man’s knees creaked as he rose. He inhaled another lungful of lotus and stared at his Lord’s back.
Yoritomo had changed much in the seven years since his father, Shōgun Kaneda, had passed on to his heavenly reward. Now in his twentieth summer, his shoulders were broad, jaw chiseled, long black hair tied up in the style of manhood. As was custom among all the great bloodlines of Shima, he had been adorned with beautiful tattoos on his thirteenth birthday: the fierce tiger prowling down his right arm venerating the guardian spirit of his clan, and the imperial sun over a field of blood lotus flowers down his left declaring him Shōgun of the Four Thrones of the Shima Empire. As the major-domo watched, the tiger tattoo blinked, flexing claws as sharp as katana across his master’s skin. The totem seemed to stare right at him.
Hideo squinted at the pipe in his hand, deciding he’d smoked enough for one morning.
“These cloudwalkers were men of the Kitsune clan, hai?” He exhaled a plume of narcotic midnight blue. “The wise man never trusts the fox, great Lord.”
“You have heard the rumor, then.”
“Nothing escapes my spies, great Lord. Our web is spun across the entire Shōgunate.” The old man moved his arm in a broad arc. “Fox, Dragon, Phoenix or Tiger, there is no clan and no secret that—”
“You did not think to report it to me?”
Hideo’s arm fell to his side, the faintest shadow of a frown creasing his brow. “Forgive me, my Lord. I had no desire to trouble you with the superstitious babbling of peasant folk. If I roused you every time the taverns or brothels crawled with some fancy about flying tigers or giant sea serpents or other yōkai—”
“Tell me what you know.”
A long silence fell, punctuated by the calls of choking sparrows. Hideo heard the soft footfalls of a servant roaming distant hallways, ringing ten notes upon an iron bell and announcing in a clear, high voice that the Hour of the Crane had begun.
“A fantasy, great Lord.” Hideo finally shrugged, “A crew of cloudwalkers
Jay Kristoff arrived in port three days ago, saying that monsoon winds drove their sky-ship off course beyond the cursed Iishi Mountains. While praying that their inflatable would not be burned to a cinder by the Thunder God Raijin, several of the men claimed to have seen the silhouette of an arashitora among the clouds.”