The Guildsman was headed directly into the storm. Thunder rocked the skies, lightning splitting the horizon in hairline fractures. The distance between them was narrowing; the arashitora cut through headwinds a dirigible couldn’t. Yukiko fancied the ship wasn’t an ironclad—it looked too small to be a warship, and moved faster than a gunboat should.
Scout, maybe? But what are they scouting for out here?
PERHAPS THE PILOT IS JUST VERY DEPRESSED.
The gale grew stronger as day descended into night, the storm reaching out to them with eager hands, adrenaline coursing through Buruu’s veins. The thunder was a rumbling hymn in his ears, and each lightning strike birthed a tiny blue-white thrill of delight in his belly.
Could they be headed to the Everstorm?
WRONG COURSE FOR SUICIDE OF THAT FLAVOR.
Then where are they going?
THERE ARE ISLANDS NORTH OF HERE. BLACK GLASS. RAZOR ISLES, WE CALL THEM. BUT NO MONKEY-CHILD BOAT COULD SURVIVE THERE.
Well, I’m running out of food. And the wedding is drawing nearer every hour we use up here. It seems a godsdamned waste to turn back now, though. What do you think?
…
Buruu?
A long, whining growl rumbled in his chest, adrenaline kicking along his veins, pupils dilating. A feeble mote of scent hung on the air; a half-remembered sliver stirring something primal inside. For a second, Yukiko was overcome; Buruu losing all control and flaring bright inside her splitting head, an impulse traveling down the Kenning and filling their mouths with saliva, making their hearts beat faster, breath come quicker. Butterflies in their stomach, face and neck flushing with heat, thigh muscles quivering. They dug her fingers into his fur, felt every strand across their palms, goosebumps thrilling their skin.
With a gasp of effort, she pulled away, drew back from his mind and slammed hers shut, pawing at the blood dripping from her nose. She realized he’d put on a burst of speed, muscles taut, talons curled into fists. She could feel his heart pounding, taste the lingering rush in her veins. Recognizing the sensation from her nights in Hiro’s arms, the anticipation of that moment each evening when their lips would first touch after a day of longing, feeling the warmth spread from her stomach down between her thighs. The way Kin had made her feel in the graveyard, her body pressed against him, breathing him in like oxygen and fire.
It was lust.
No, something worse.
Something further from desire and closer to madness.
Buruu?
She reached into the Kenning, trying to expose only the smallest sliver of her psyche, as if opening a door just the tiniest of cracks. His heat burned brighter than the sun. The headache lurched about her skull, a stumble-drunk thing of avalanches and metal clubs, and she closed her eyes against it, holding her hand before her face as if shielding it from a bonfire.
Buruu? Can you hear me?
His only response was to fly faster. The rivets and bolts in his wing assembly groaned in protest, and he climbed higher, out of the wind snarling at the ocean’s face, up into smoother skies. Bearing north like a compass point, blood pounding, thudding, thrumming, focused on the faint fragments of scent now filling his mind, hooks in his skin, drowning out her voice and leaving nothing but the thunderous pulse at his temples.
Buruu, stop. Where are you going?
NORTH.
She reeled upon his back, almost falling, digging fingernails into his neck. So impossibly loud. So awfully bright. The pressure and heat turning her skull to glass and kicking at the insides with iron-shod boots.
She twisted to look behind them. Shabishii Island and the monastery were nowhere to be seen. Nothing but blood-dark ocean now, as the sun’s last light guttered and died. Howling wind all around, the break and hiss of vast seas below, and fear raised its cold, smooth head in her belly, spread fingers through her insides. Throwing her arms around Buruu’s neck, she pressed her face into his warmth. Tasting the echo of his thoughts, the intoxication filling his veins, like a junksick lotusfiend in a burning valley of smoke. And there, amidst his heartbeat’s pounding song, the blood-drunk rush of desire, she caught a hint of it. The thing that spurred him on, robbed him of all reason, reduced him once more to the beast she’d met in the shadows of the Iishi, prowling from the darkness, smeared with oni blood.
Somewhere north, a trace hanging on the wind, knotting itself amongst his feathers and dragging him onward, like lightning toward a spire of copper.
It was a female.
A female in heat.
PART 2
TEMPEST
Yet pitiless Death,
Claimed Izanagi’s pale bride, as night claims frail day.
And in Yomi’s depths, pure love turned to darkest hate, her thoughts to revenge.
The Maker God failed, night swallowing all his hopes, his bride left behind.
Black kiss on his lips, Izanagi put to law,
The Rites of the Dead.
from the Book of Ten Thousand Days
15
THE HOUR OF THE PHOENIX
Father was just another word for failure.
Slumped at the table with a bottle in his hand, shrouded in old sweat and liquor. Medals on the wall behind, bright ribbons and tarnished bronze, engraved with kanji like VALOR and SACRIFICE. Empty eyes in a bloated, sunburned face, a spit-slick sheen on the whiskers at his chin. An ugly stump where his hand used to be, forearm mangled, shining skin. Hair like a scarecrow in a crowless field, shoulders buckled under the weight of regret. Knuckles scabbed from their mother’s teeth. The land outside running to ruin while he drank himself stupid and blamed the weather, the blood in his veins, the gods, the war. But never himself.
Never himself.
“Where’ve you been, Yoshi?” he growls.
The boy is drenched in sweat, pollen fogging his goggles, skin blistered from his day in the sun. He hasn’t even had time to wash his face, drink a mouthful of water, and already it’s begun.
“Where do you think?” He holds up his hands, black dirt under broken fingernails.
“And now you’re off to town, eh?” his father slurs. “Prancing about with your pretty little friends? You think I don’t know what you do? Who you do it with?”
“Who and what I do is my business.”
“You act like lowborn trash, that’s all people are ever going to see.”
“You’d know, right Da?”
“I made something of myself, you little bastard. I was a soldier. A hero. Lowborn or not.” He waves at the medals on the walls. “I proved to those Kitsune bastards it doesn’t matter what blood flows inside a man. It’s the heart that beats in his chest.”