The Last Stormdancer

“I do not, Lady. I am … that is to say, I was a simple artist. But my grandmother is a wise woman, and she is convinced the Guild is to blame. Her village stands at the edge of a murmuring forest, by the banks of a chuckling stream. But the water flows from a Guild factory upriver, and the thicker their smoke grows, the sicker people become. The tanuki I spoke to in the Iishi forests said similar. The phoenix also. And why else do the Guildsmen wear masks? Those suits? Why do they not breathe the same air we do unless they know it is toxic?”

“You were an artist?”

Jun frowned, confused as to why that, of all he had said, might catch the Lady’s attention.

“Hai,” he finally nodded. “My father was a hunter. But when my sight began failing and it became clear I would never follow in his footsteps, my mother thought to teach me of the arts. Poetry. Painting. Until the sun took my eyes completely, at least, and the sickness them besides.”

“Your tale grows sadder still, Jun-san. It has the seeming of a great ballad. A song for the ages. A painter struck blind by the Sun Goddess. A poet, never to write again. All you need is some unrequited love and perhaps a tragic death…”

“Please, Lady,” Jun said. “You make jest at my expense. But the spirit beasts are dying in droves. The thunder tigers are planning to leave Shima. We have only days until they decide whether or not to abandon us to our fate. And the prophecy spoke of their importance.”

Jun could hear the skepticism in the Lady’s voice. “Prophecy?”

“My grandmother has the Sight, great Lady. She foretold a child of her bloodline—a child Kitsune-born— would save these islands from certain destruction.”

“And you … believe yourself this child, Jun-san?”

“I have no living kin, save her and my grandfather. If anyone is to fulfill the prophecy, it must be me. But we have only days. So I beg forgiveness if I seem ill at ease sitting here drinking this lovely tea.”

“You ride one of the beasts already, Jun-san. Why do you need the Shogun’s help at all?”

“In Grandmother’s prophecy, the child would ride with an army of thunder tigers at his back. But the arashitora will not help if we do not help ourselves. If they are to stand against the Guild, the Shogun must stand beside them. The arashitora will not fight our battles for us.”

“There is no Shogun to stand against the chi-mongers, Jun-san.”

“Will your husband be victorious against his brother, great Lady? Claim the Four Thrones of Shima as his own?”

“Nothing in this life is certain, Jun-san. Least of all the battle between Bear and Bull.”

“My grandmother taught me differently, Lady Ami. She taught me to believe I would save this place from itself. And I intend to do just that.”

“Excuse me, Lady,” the maidservant said. “I must fetch more tea.”

Jun heard the girl rise, retreat with short, clipped steps across the floorboards. He felt the cats purr in his head, their chests thrumming, the Lady Ami stroking each in turn, watching him in silence. He felt his blindness keenly, longing for the little sparrow on his shoulder. He could look through the cats’ eyes to be certain, but then he would see only himself. Not her face. Not her eyes, no doubt locked on his, those ruby lips pressed thin in thought as she watched and he remembered—

“I agreed to speak to you out of respect for the beast you rode, young master Jun. My father raised my sister and I on tales of the Stormdancers. But this talk of prophecy and destiny … it will carry no weight with my husband, should he prove victor against his brother. And Lord Riku will care less for it still. Regardless, it is doubtful the war will be decided within days, and days are all you have before the arashitora leave.”

Jun heard the serving girl reach the doors.

Close them softly.

Slide a bolt into place.

He frowned, head tilted. Rising slowly to his feet.

“I ask forgiveness if this displeases,” Lady Ami continued. “But if the only proof—”

Jun grasped his walking stick in both hands. With a click and a flourish, he drew his fists apart, revealing the three feet of gleaming folded steel hidden inside the haft.

“Master Jun—” the Lady warned, a tremor in her voice.

Jun leaped across the tea service, sending the pot and cups crashing to the floor. Lady Ami rose to her feet and shrank back in sudden fright, clutching the small tanto blade hidden in the drum bow at her waist. The guards about the room cried out in alarm at the sight of Jun’s hidden blade, raising their tasseled spears and charging toward the blind boy, intent on protecting their mistress.

As such, they missed the assassins crawling in the rafters above.

A shuddering pop! pop! pop! pop! rang out overhead, the air filled with dozens upon dozens of gleaming shuriken stars. The guards fell, bloody and screaming, the whistling blades shearing through skin and leather, puncturing iron breastplates. Lady Ami cursed as Jun pushed her back against a pillar, swiping at the air with his thin sword. Sparks flew, blinding bursts of light, the boy moving as a field of long grass in a rolling winter wind. His blade struck the shuriken from the air, one, two, three, head tilted, eyes closed, brow furrowed, pain twisting his features as one of the stars struck his arm, another grazed his cheek. Blood flowing now, bright and red, and still he moved amidst the hail, sweeping his blade as if a conductor’s baton, and the gleaming death sprayed toward him, his orchestra.

A series of hollow clicks and the room fell silent, save for the Lady’s shuddering breath, the moans of dying guards. And from the ceiling, long, thin-limbed shapes unfurled—men, clad in shadows, strange weapons with flat barrels in their hands. Loose black cloth swathing their forms, a strip of flesh showing through their cowls, eyes covered in goggles of dark red glass.

They sheathed their hollow weapons at their waists, drew long katana from their backs, the blades studded with spinning, growling teeth. Jun frowned, the engines’ growls filling his ears, clouding the assassins’ footsteps as they crept closer. He felt the Lady Ami at his back, heard her draw her own blade, ragged breath, steel in her voice.

“There are eight of them,” she whispered.

“I know.” A slow nod. “Can you use that tanto you carry?”

“I am no master like you, Jun-san,” Ami breathed. “Should we live through this, I would hear the telling of how a blind painter became a sword-saint…”

“Stay behind me, then. I will protect you with my life.”

Soft footsteps as the figures gathered about them. The Lady’s voice, softer still.

“My thanks, Jun-san.”

“No thanks necessary,” the boy smiled. “I am in no danger.”

“There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance, young master.”

“Not arrogance, Lady. I simply cannot die today.”

He flashed her a winning grin.

“I have not saved the world yet.”

The assassins closed, growling swords raised high in their hands. Were this some pantomime or puppet show on the streets of your scabs, monkey-child, the assailants would have come one at a time, neat and orderly, to be impaled in proper fashion upon the young and dashing hero’s blade to the hymn of the cheering crowd. And it is true that, for some astonishing reason, the first two murderers did approach in a rather conventional array, one slightly behind the other, perhaps lulled into false confidence by the milk-white orbs behind the boy’s lashes.

Jun side-stepped a scything, downward blow, the same hummingbird speed he had used to shame me before my kin serving him now in an arena just as deadly. He leaned in close, below another sweeping strike, and with a bright note of razored steel and the sharp clipped intake of his assailant’s breath, he pushed his blade in and out of the assassin’s chest, one, twice, spinning on the spot and planting his boot square in his foe’s belly.

The bleeding, punctured lump of carrion flew back into his comrades, scattering them long enough for Jun to swipe his blade across the second assassin’s throat. Bright arterial spray painted the boy’s face crimson, the Lady Ami gritting her teeth to stifle her gasp of horror. And then all became chaos, no form or order to it, just six