He felt Yukiko at his back. Stubborn as a mountain runs deep. Pain of her aching muscles in his head. Blisters on their hands. Desperate need.
Twenty feet away.
STAY BACK.
I can help you!
Buruu thrust the smaller arashitora away with a thundering roar, sending him twisting over onto his back. Pressing the advantage, he tore the nomad’s ribs, trying to seize a mouthful of throat as the young one rolled away. Wings thrashing, snarling as he scrambled to his feet, bright red droplets flying between the raindrops and painting snow-white fur the color of slaughter. It was the nomad’s turn to use the Raijin Song now, blasting Buruu back as the thunder from his wings threw puddles high into the shivering air. The downpour bent like a bowstring, droplets as fat as lotusflies splitting into blinding steam-thin spray.
The thunder tigers circled each other, both blooded and wary. The nomad crouched low, gathered for a spring. He looked beyond the crest of Buruu’s wings, caught sight of Yukiko on the cables, the gaijin struggling behind her. Eyes flashing. Pupils dilating. A guttural snarl of outrage.
Interlopers. Monkey-children. Meat.
He spread his wings, springing skyward, eyes on the girl.
NO.
Buruu leaped into the air, beating broken wings with all his fury, rivets and ball joints shrieking. He collided with the younger buck and held him close, bore them both down into the stone. The nomad landed on his back, breath spraying from his lungs, snarling, screeching, all flashing claws and thrashing wings. The thunder tigers rolled across the shale in a tumble of twisted metal and orphaned feathers.
Buruu felt Yukiko crank across the last few feet of cable, hook her legs around the tower and pull herself in. She turned to help the gaijin, elbow crooked around the copper spiral, fingers outstretched. They grasped hands and she pulled him closer, one leg hooked in the spire as they struggled to uncouple him from the contraption connected to the cables above.
The nomad’s roar was an earsplitting bellow of rage. But beneath that, Buruu heard Raijin suck in a breath, felt faint electricity tingling down his spine.
YUKIKO, GET OFF THE TOWER.
I’m trying, the harness is—
YUKIKO, GET OFF NOW!
An arc of impossible blue crackled across the clouds above, reached down with a single, crooked finger. Yukiko had time to scream a warning and push the boy away before she jumped backward, hair streaming in a long, sodden ribbon. The world stilled in the split second before impact, frozen and silent and perfect. The bolt struck copper with a metallic whump and the hiss of superheated vapor. She threw her arms up over her face to blot out the light, brighter than the sun. Crashing onto black stone, head cracking against broken glass.
The aftershock sucked the air from Buruu’s chest, scorching his fur, crackling across his own wings and his foe’s as they broke apart in a spray of rain and blood.
The world after the strike seemed muted, as if the storm sat within an old, rusty soundbox on the other side of a darkened room. Yukiko blinked at the black stains upon her eyes, rolling about on her back, head still ringing with one constant, high-pitched note. Buruu backed off, stood between her and the nomad, wings spread, feet planted like the roots of mountains.
ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?
I think so …
LUCKY.
Kitsune looks after his own.
THE BOY?
Yukiko sat up, squinted into the blurred gloom.
“Ilyitch?”
“Yukiko!”
A faint cry, almost inaudible over the crashing waves, the roaring storm. And with dread rising in her gut, Yukiko realized the gaijin had been knocked away by the lightning strike, plummeting over the precipice and into the raging ocean below.
“Ilyitch!”
Yukiko scrambled to her feet, ran to the tower. The rain was hissing where it touched the copper, sizzling like oil on a skillet. She stepped back, too frightened to touch it. Screaming the gaijin’s name again, she saw him thrashing for a brief moment between towering breakers, reaching toward her. The ocean rushed into his rainskin, and the flying fox he was still buckled to dragged him down, fingers clawing at the surface as if it were solid enough to hold on to.
But it wasn’t.
32
TREMORS
They’d stepped out into chilled autumn air, tall and proud as lords.
Jurou in charcoal silk, a splash of Tora red at his obi, neck adorned with new jade. Yoshi in black, balloon hakama about his legs and a thigh-length uwagi of tailored silk, hair bound in tight braids, streaming down his back like snakes. The pair had sauntered down the boulevard, Yoshi tipping the split brim of his hat to anyone who looked their way.
A fine day to be alive.
Upside seemed busier than usual, people running to and fro, more bushimen than Jurou could ever remember seeing. Palace Way was awash with grimy flesh, motor-rickshaws running on fumes. They’d caught a foot ’shaw to Docktown, Yoshi tipping the finger-thin driver handsomely, stepping into the tattoo parlor’s confines. And there they lay, shirtless in the mild chill, as an ancient little Fushicho man and his pock-faced son drew forth bamboo needles and bottles of Danroan ink and set about inflicting an enormous amount of pain in the name of vanity.
Yoshi had commissioned a new piece; a beautiful portrait of Lord Izanagi stirring the formless ocean of creation with his spear tip, running from the mouthwatering curve of his right pectoral muscle down to his hip. Jurou was having some flourish added to his clan irezumi; great and beautiful Tiger prowling around his bicep, looking as if he were about to leap off the boy’s flesh and tear the world to rags.
Jurou’s pipe dangled from his lips, and he ran a gentle tongue upon the tip, sucking down lungfuls of beautiful blue-black. He knew he shouldn’t be on the lotus, knew the price paid for his little high was waist-deep blood. But the itching need had been hitting him hard the last few days, and it wasn’t as if he couldn’t stop if he wanted. He listened to the buzz in the streets outside, the lotusflies in the rafters, swelling velvet and soporific between his ears. Sensation faded beneath the familiar lotus kiss, tongue too thick for his mouth, staring at the boy he loved, flinching and flexing as the old man’s needles danced upon his skin.
“You should get Lady Izanami done on the other side,” he said, pointing to Yoshi’s chest.
The old man looked up sharply, gave the warding sign against evil.
“Smoke is going to your brain, Princess.” Yoshi winced as the old man’s needles began dancing again. “Never let the dragon steer the ship.”
“Why not?” Jurou exhaled a plume of sweetness in Yoshi’s direction.
“Why the hells would I have the Endsinger inked on my skin?”
“Life and death. Light and dark.” A hand waving, vaguely. “You know, symmetry.”
“Crazier than a Docktown whore, you.”
“Lady Izanami wasn’t always a death goddess.” The pock-faced artiste seemed to be digging his needles extra hard, but Jurou couldn’t bring himself to care. “She was the Earth Mother once. Gave birth to this entire island and seven more besides. It’s not her fault Lord Izanagi couldn’t get her back from Yomi. It’s not her fault he left her there in the dark.”