Stormdancer (5 page)

“Soiled by Yomi’s filth,
The taint of the Underworld, Izanagi wept.
Seeking Purity,
The Way of the Cleansing Rite, The Maker God bathed.
And from these waters,
Were begat Sun, Moon and Storm. Walk Purity’s Way.”

Another Purifier stepped forward, lit twin pilot flames at the blackened fixtures on its wrists and held them aloft to the crowd.
“Walk Purity’s Way!” it bellowed.
Approving cries rang out across the Burning Stones, the voices of fanatics among the mob drowning out the uneasy murmurs of the remainder. Akihito clenched his teeth and turned his back on the grim spectacle.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Yukiko tried to tell herself it was rage that turned her stomach to water, made her legs shake and stole the spit from her mouth.
She tried to tell herself that, but she knew better.
She looked up at Akihito, her face a mask, drawn and bloodless. Her voice trembled as she spoke.
“And you ask why I get in their way.”

Yukiko and Akihito made their way through the squeezeways, over the refuse-choked gutters, past the grasping hands of a dozen blacklung beggars and down into Docktown; a cramped and weeping growth of low-rent tenements and rusting warehouses slumped in the shadow of the sky-ships. A broad wooden boardwalk stretched out over the black waters of the bay, hundreds of people shoving and weaving their way across the bleached timbers. The docking spires were thin metal towers, corroded by black rain. Hissing pipes and cables pumped hydrogen and the volatile lotus fuel, simply called “chi,” up to the waiting sky-ships. The towers swayed in the wind, creaking ominously whenever a ship docked or put out to the red again. Lotusmen swarmed in the air about them like brass corpseflies, the pipes coiled on their backs spitting out bright plumes of blue-white flame.

Steam whistles shrieked in the distance; breakfast break for the workers slaving in Kigen’s sprawling nest of chi refineries. It was a well-known truth that most of the wretches sweating inside those walls were expected to die there. If the toxic fumes or heavy machinery didn’t end them, working twenty-hour shifts for barely more than a beggar’s salary probably would. The laborers were known as “karōshimen”— literally, men who kill themselves through overwork. It was ironic, given that many of them were little more than children. Flitting among grinding cogs and crunching gears that could snag and chew a stray lock of hair or an unwary hand without skipping a beat, soft flesh withering in the shadow of hard metal and blue-black smoke. Children turned old and feeble before they ever had a chance to be young.

“Vwuch vwyy?” Akihito asked.
Yukiko sipped her broth and found she’d completely lost her appetite. “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” she murmured.
The giant stuffed the last of his cracker bowl into his mouth. Yukiko pointed

in the direction of the eastern docks, furthest away from the cloud of smog and ash and reeking exhaust fumes.
“Is that . . . crab I smell?” The voice was weak, muffled against Akihito’s ribs.
“He lives!” The big man grinned, slinging his friend down off his shoulders and planting him in the street. Masaru squinted, eye swelling shut, long peppergray hair a bedraggled mess. His face was smeared with blood.
“Izanagi’s balls, my head.” He winced, rubbing the back of his skull. “What hit me?”
Akihito shrugged.
“Saké.”
“We didn’t drink that much . . .”
“Here, eat.” Yukiko offered her father the remainder of her breakfast. Grabbing the bowl, Masaru gulped it down as the crowd seethed around them. He swayed on his feet, looking for a moment as if the crab might make a break for freedom, then patted his stomach and belched.
“What the hells are we doing down here?” Masaru glared around the docks, one hand aloft to shield his eyes from the hothouse light while he fished out his goggles.
“We’ve been summoned,” Yukiko said.
“Summoned to what? Breakfast?”
Akihito snickered.
“A hunt.” Yukiko frowned at the big man.
“A hunt?” Masaru scoffed, checking to see if his ribs were cracked. “For the Shōgun’s slippers?”
“I thought you’d be at least a little happy about it.” Yukiko looked back and forth between the pair. “It’ll give you both something to do besides smoking your money away in card houses all day.”
Akihito frowned. “I don’t smoke . . .”
“There’s nothing left out there that’s worth hunting.” Masaru rubbed at the saké bottle-imprint on the back of his head. “The Shōgun should just bloody dismiss us and be done with it.”
“He’s sending us after an arashitora,” Akihito muttered.
Masaru scowled up at the big man.
“I thought you just said you didn’t smoke. Did you start when I wasn’t looking? Bloody fool, it’s a filthy habit, I’ll not—”
“The scroll arrived last night, father,” Yukiko said. “Set with the seal of the Shōgun himself. A thunder tiger has been spotted by cloudwalkers past the Iishi Mountains.”
“Damned cloudwalkers,” Masaru shook his head. “Drunk on chi exhaust twenty-four hours a day. They’d say they saw the cursed fruit of Lady Izanami’s black loins, the thousand and one oni dancing naked in the lotus fields, if they thought it’d get them a free meal or into some harlot’s bed . . .”
Masaru caught himself and pressed his lips shut, cheeks reddening.
“We’re commanded to bring it back alive.” Yukiko steered the subject away from sex as fast as she could. She was still occasionally woken by nightmares about the day her father had tried to sit her down for “the talk.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?” Masaru asked. “They’re extinct!”
“That would be your bloody problem, wouldn’t it? Or was someone else appointed Black Fox of Shima and Master of Hunters when I wasn’t looking?”
“Don’t swear,” Masaru scowled.
Yukiko rolled her eyes behind her goggles. She wiped the lotus ash from the polarized lenses with her kerchief, then tied the cloth around her face to filter out the stench. With a flick of her long dark hair, she turned and walked toward the eastern docks, hands stuffed into the black obi about her waist.
Her father watched her, still rubbing the back of his head, a pained expression on his face.
“May you live a hundred years and never have daughters, my friend,” he warned Akihito.
The giant sighed and clapped him on the back, and the pair followed her into the mob.

Kasumi loaded the last pack onto the elevator, then straightened her back and sighed. She wiped her brow and re-tied her ponytail, catching up the dark strands of hair clinging to her face. At a signal from the dockman, the elevator ascended the docking spire, wheels and pulleys shrieking in protest. High above her, the Thunder Child clanked against its couplings, cloudwalkers calling from her rigging like lost birds.

Kigen Bay stretched out to the south; an undulating carpet of bobbing filth and flaming refuse. Lotusmen had lit a fire on the black waters three days ago to burn off some of the accumulated chi-sludge, and parts of it were still ablaze, trailing dark columns of smoke up into the curtain of exhaust overhead. A gull with threadbare feathers cried a mournful song from atop the charred remains of a capsized fishing boat. It caught sight of movement in the muck, and readied itself for the plunge.

Pulling on a conical straw hat, Kasumi cast her eyes over the sky-ship above. She allowed herself a grudging smile; at least they were being sent on their fool’s errand in style. The ship was gleaming black, highlighted with blood-red, the long serpentine coils of a green dragon painted down the flanks of her inflatable. Her skin and fixtures were still unscarred by corrosion or toxin bleaching, telling Kasumi that the Child couldn’t have been commissioned more than a season or two ago. Nothing stayed beautiful under Shima’s black rain for long.

Kasumi was dressed in loose gray cloth. The short sleeves of her uwagi revealed beautiful tattoos; the imperial sun on her left shoulder and upper arm, a ferocious tiger stalking down her right, marking her as a member of the Tora clan. The geisha at Shōgun Yoritomo’s court whispered that she was well past the age when she should have found a husband, but she still possessed a sharp, feral kind of beauty. Deeply lidded eyes, skin turned nut brown by a life spent beneath Shima’s sweltering red sun. Black hair ran in rivers down her spine, pierced by jade combs carved to resemble prowling tigers. There was a hardness to her, calluses and lean muscles, a glint of ferocity in her movements: a big cat, pacing a cage as wide as the world.

Several of the Child’s crew nodded as they filed past her to climb the spire. They were cleaner than the average cloudwalker, meaning that you could probably toss one into the black “water” of Kigen Bay and have him emerge dirtier than when he went in. But their skin was still coated in a greasy film of dragon smoke, their eyes the perpetual red of a lotus-fiend’s.

The Child’s captain emerged from the small office at the spire’s base, slapping the back of the fat customs man inside.
“The lotus must bloom,” he said, nodding farewell.
“The lotus must bloom,” the fat man replied.
The captain sauntered over to Kasumi, muttering under his breath. He stuffed some paperwork into his obi as he scowled up at the Child. He was around ten years younger than her, twenty-four or twenty-five if she was forced to guess, with a long plaited mustache descending from a handsome, if slightly overfed face. His gaudy, short-sleeved tunic proudly displayed his elaborate dragon tattoo and the single lotus bloom of a Guild-approved contractor. Custom Shigisen goggles and a fantastically expensive breather were slung around his neck.
“Son of a ronin’s whore,” he said. “I should’ve been born a Lotusman. These bribes get worse every trip.”
“Bribes?” Kasumi frowned, tilted her head in question.
The captain gestured to the paperwork in his belt.
“We have to fly over three clan territories to get to the Iishi Mountains. Tiger, Dragon, then Fox. That’s three different permits, and three different officials who need their palms greased to make sure my paperwork doesn’t get ‘misplaced.’ Plus we’ll need to refuel in Yama city before we fly back, and the Kitsune just bumped their docking fees another three percent.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Yamagata- san,” Kasumi said. “Perhaps you should tell your customs man that you fly at the Shōgun’s command.”
“Wouldn’t matter.” He scowled, shook his head. “Any discount I haggle would only get added to my next flight. He has his own bribes to pay, and lotus contracts don’t come cheap. The Guild always get their coin, one way or the other. Even the Shōgun knows that.”
Yamagata fell silent as a Lotusman clanked past, cogs of its atmos- suit whirring. Red sunlight glittered in its eyes as it gazed up at the Thunder Child’s hull. It clicked a few beads across the mechabacus on its chest, whispered something distorted, then launched itself into the sky. The pipes on its back spat out bright plumes of blue-white flame. It flitted about the Child’s underside, spewing smoke and clicking more beads from one side of its chest to the other.
“Always like you to know they’re watching, eh?” Kasumi murmured.
“Comes with the territory,” Yamagata shrugged. “Every ship that hauls lotus has a Guildsman living on board. You get used to them looking over your shoulder.”
“Nice to be trusted.”
“It’s worse since last week. Two of them burned to death when the refinery caught fire.” Yamagata shook his head. “They locked down the whole complex for three days. Nothing coming in or out. You know what that does to the bottom line of a man like me?”
“Didn’t the radio say the fire was an accident?” Kasumi raised an eyebrow. “Seems a lot of fuss over bad luck.”
“What, and that surprises you? When was the last time you heard about a Guildsman getting killed, accident or no?”
“Guildsmen are flesh and blood under those suits, just like everyone else.” Kasumi shrugged. “All men get their day before the Judge of the Nine Hells; Guildsman, beggar or Shōgun. It makes no difference to him.”
Yamagata sniffed.
“True enough, I suppose.”
Kasumi touched her brow, then her lips, muttering beneath her breath, “Great Enma-ō, judge us fair.”
The Lotusman descended from the skies in a rolling cloud of chi exhaust, landing forty feet down the boardwalk. Peasant folk hurried out of the way, knocking each other over in their haste. The Guildsman clomped away over timber and cobbles without a backward glance.
“Is all your gear aboard?” Yamagata asked.
“Hai.” Kasumi nodded, ran her hand across her brow. “The others should be here soon.”
“Good. I want to get off before the day grows still. Wind at our backs.”
“Minister Hideo commanded we were to wait until he’d arrived.”
“Yomi’s gates, I didn’t know he was coming down here.” The captain sighed. “Bad enough that my ship is being sent north to chase a smoke vision in the middle of monsoon season. Worse that I have to sit on my hands waiting for some bureaucrat to kiss me goodbye. My Guild rep is a son of a whore, wasting my time on chaff like this.”
“Well, someone in the Guild obviously thinks this is important, or they wouldn’t have assigned their best captain to the task, no?”
Yamagata scowled. “The Lotusmen might be happy wasting the finest ship in the fleet on the Shōgun’s pride, but kissing my arse isn’t going to make me turn cartwheels about it, Hunter.”
“If it’s so foolish, why waste the finest ship in the fleet on it?”
“You know that as well as I do.” Yamagata spat onto the wooden decking. “Politics. The Shōgun controls the army, but only the Guild know the secret behind chi production. Both sides need to keep the other happy or the whole shithouse goes up in flames. I’m just a commoner who gets paid to lug their product from place to place. If I want to keep my contract, I go where I’m bloody told.”
“Oh, I know the workings of court politics, Yamagata- san,” Kasumi smiled. “I’ve hunted with the Black Fox under the reign of two different Shōgun now— long enough to become well acquainted with the mating habits of vipers.”
“Then why interrogate a lowly cloudwalker about it? What the hells would I know that you don’t?”
“Well, between the lines, I was asking who you’d angered to land this errand?” Kasumi brushed a stray hair from her eyes. “It must have been someone important.”
The captain glanced at her sidelong, a slow, grudging smile forming on his lips. “I don’t kiss and tell, Lady.”
“Ah, so.” She smiled back. “The wife of someone important, then.”
“Daughter, actually. But it all ends the same. An empty hold, a wasted trip, and me cursing the bastard responsible for both.”
“I hope she was worth it.”
Yamagata closed his eyes and gave a delighted little shiver. “You have no idea.”
Kasumi laughed. “Just keep your hands off any daughters you might meet on this trip, Yamagata-san. Master Masaru isn’t as forgiving as some neo-chōnin merchant with a fat purse and a few Guild contacts.”
“No fear. I’d sooner put my wedding tackle in the mouth of a hungry sea dragon than anger the Black Fox of Shima, Lady.”
Yamagata grinned and gave a small bow, one fist covered by the palm of his other hand. Kasumi returned the bow and watched him begin his long climb up the spire. The man swung on the corroded rungs, deft hands on rusting iron, up toward his ship above. The Thunder Child’s captain seemed a decent sort, and Kasumi breathed a small sigh of relief. The Dragon and Fox zaibatsu had been fighting border skirmishes for de cades, and there was little love lost between the two clans. Although not every Ryu or Kitsune took the longstanding grudge to heart, she had been worried Yamagata might not appreciate having the Black Fox or his daughter aboard.
Kasumi turned her eyes to the crowd, leaning on her bo- staff—a six-foot length of ironwood capped with burnished steel. The mob milled around her: cloudwalkers fresh off their ships, sararīmen rubbing shoulders with the clockwork suits of the Lotusmen, young boys handing out sticky printed newssheets and singing tales of barbarian atrocities against Shima colonists overseas. She even noticed a few gaijin traders among the mob, short blond hair and pale, smog- stained skin, clothed in dyed wool of a strange cut, animal furs draped over their shoulders despite the crushing heat. They were surrounded by wooden crates and looming piles of genuine leather, negotiating the price on a dozen rolls of tanned cow hide with a swarming gang of neo-chōnin.
For the past twenty years, the round-eyes had worn the label of “enemy”; painted in the newssheets as treacherous blood-drinkers who stole the spirits of beasts and wore their skins. They had wasted the last two de cades fighting a futile resis tance against the Shōgunate invasion, when it would have been easier for everyone if they simply rolled belly-up and allowed themselves to be civilized. Kasumi marveled that even in the midst of all-out warfare, there were men who sought profit in the beds of their would-be conquerors. Yet here they were: gaijin merchantmen trekking across the seas in their lightning-powered freighters, each one with an elaborate residency permit inked on their wrists. They stood on the boardwalk under the narrowed stares of the city guards, selling their leather goods at exorbitant prices in a country where hide made from anything other than corpse-rat was now virtually impossible to find. They haggled and traded and counted their coin, pale blue eyes hidden behind polarized glass, watching war prisoners arrive by the shipload. But if the Docktown gaijin had misgivings about the treatment of their countrymen, they also had no wish to join their fellows on their march up to the chapterhouse. And so they kept their heads down, and their opinions to themselves.
After a spell, Kasumi caught sight of Akihito, standing a head taller than most of the mob. The big man appeared as if he was treading water in a sea of dirty straw hats and paper umbrellas.
She waved, and the trio shoved their way through the throng until they were face to face.
“You found them, I see.” Kasumi smiled at Yukiko. “And in one piece.”
The girl grimaced, pulled her goggles down around her throat. “One smelly piece.”
“Masaru- sama.” Kasumi bowed to Yukiko’s father. She tried not to notice when the girl rolled her eyes.
Masaru returned the bow, still looking quite ragged about the edges. An ugly purple bruise was forming under one eye, spilling out from under the lens of his goggles.
“How are you, you big lump?” Kasumi looked Akihito up and down. “Excited?”
“No, I’m hungry.”
“You just ate!” Yukiko shook her head.
“Oh, cheer up.” Kasumi slapped the big man on the arm. “Don’t tell me your blood doesn’t quicken at the thought of hunting a thunder tiger, you grumpy sod. It’s been years since we went after something like this.”
“Something like what?” Akihito folded his arms, clearly unimpressed. “The figment of a smoke-fiend’s imagination?”
“We should get moving,” Masaru interrupted the pair, squinting through the haze at the sky-ship above. “Is all the gear aboard? Extra Kobiashis and blacksleep?”
“Hai, Masaru- sama,” Kasumi nodded. “It cost me a few extra kouka to get the cage down here on short notice, but I needn’t have rushed. Minister Hideo said we were to wait until he arrived.”
“Aiya,” Masaru sighed, lying down across a stack of crates and rubbing the back of his head. “That could take all day. Someone kick me when he gets here.”
“You got anything to eat?” Akihito raised a hopeful eyebrow.
Yukiko snorted over Kasumi’s laughter. Reaching into a pouch at her belt, the older woman tossed the giant a rehydrated rice cake, and the pair sat down in the shade to wait.
A dozen beggars were huddled across the way from the Thunder Child’s berth, wrapped in dirty rags, fingers outstretched and trembling. One was a young girl around Yukiko’s age. She was a pretty thing: deep, moist eyes and creamy skin. Her mother sat beside her, rocking back and forth, the dark, telltale marks of blacklung smudged around her lips.
Kasumi touched the kerchief tied around her own face, wondered for the thousandth time if it would be enough to protect her from that dreaded stain. Blacklung had reached epidemic proportions in the last de cade, and the final stages of the disease were terrible enough to make its victims envy the dead. She’d feel safer with more than prayers and a grubby rag over her mouth to protect her.
Perhaps if this fool’s errand bore fruit, the Shōgun would reward them with enough kouka to afford their own mechanized breathers . . .
Kasumi scowled, shook her head at the thought.
And perhaps the Shōgun will sprout wings and have no need of a thunder tiger at all.
She watched as Yukiko wandered across the street, knelt down beside the beggars in the dust. They spoke, Yukiko and the girl, a few minutes together under the red sun. Kasumi couldn’t hear what they said. She saw Yukiko glance back at her slumbering father, then up to the sky-ship that would be their home for the next few weeks. The beggar girl followed her gaze. The mother began coughing, shoulders hunched, face twisted in pain, knuckles pressed hard over her mouth. When she drew her hand away, it was smeared with dark fluid.
The girl wrapped her fingers in her mother’s, greasy black smudged between their skin. Yukiko looked up from those stained hands into the girl’s eyes. Reaching into her obi, she tugged out her coin purse and handed it over. Then she stood and walked away.
Kasumi smiled, pretended not to notice.
The sun climbed higher in the sky. The stone around them became the walls of a kiln, sweat trickling across their dusty skin. The crowd milled about amidst the fumes and flies and oppressive heat, a seething ocean of flesh and bone and metal beneath a burning sky.
“An arashitora, Kas,’ Akihito muttered. “Gods help us.”
Kasumi sighed and turned her eyes to the horizon.
High above them, the lone gull called into the choking wind and received no answer.