"It will protect you." He took the scabbard from the box, sheathed the blade and tucked it into her obi at the small of her back. "In the times when I cannot. And even when I'm not there, I will be with you."

She felt strong arms around her then, lifting her off the ground, drawing her up into the sky. He said nothing at all, simply held her, rocked her back and forth and let her cry. She put her arms around his neck and held tight, as if he were the only thing to keep her from going under, falling away into the cold and black.

He pressed his lips against her cheek. His whiskers tickled her skin.

"I will be with you," he said.

He could always make her smile.

A softness to her edges, satin weight on her eyelids. Her tongue too big for her mouth. The world swaying to a tune she couldn't quite hear. The room spinning as she opened her eyes.

"You wake," Daichi said.

Wind kami called down timeworn mountainsides, the spirits playing in the branches of the treetop village outside, bringing the brittle-crisp promise of winter to come. Yukiko sat up slowly, groaning and squeezing her eyes shut once more. The pulse of the entire world beat beneath her skin, the thoughts of every beast, man, woman and child around her, layered upon one another in a shapeless cacophony. She pawed blindly beside her bed, seized the half-empty sake jug, upending it into her mouth. Daichi murmured concern, tried to take the bottle from her hands but she pushed him away, molten fire pouring down her throat, rushing to fill the void inside her.

"Yukiko-"

"Stop, please," she begged, curling into a ball with her fists to her temples. "Give me a minute. Just one minute."

The old man sat in silence, legs crossed, palms upturned on his knees. He seemed a statue of some bygone warrior, katana slung across his back-a glacial stillness in contrast to the seething shift inside her head.

To even glance into the Kenning was to look at the sun. To make cinders of her eyes. But she could feel Buruu in there, rumbling beneath it all like thunder on a distant horizon. She reached for him, synapses ablaze-just a touch to let him know she was awake. The sake did its work; black velvet thrown over her head and smothering the noise and heat of the world. She felt it flow her to her edges, a beautiful gravity filling her to her fingernails, dragging the Kenning to some quiet corner in her mind and choking until it could barely breathe.

She didn't know how long she lay there, curled like a babe in lightless, amniotic warmth. But finally she opened her eyes a sliver, saw the old man still seated at the edge of her bed, concern plain in those steel-gray eyes. He coughed once, twice, as if he'd been struggling to remain silent, wiping his knuckles across his lips. And finally he met her gaze.

"What is happening to you, Yukiko?"

His voice was graveled. Rusted. The muddy rasp of a pipe-fiend, so akin to her father's for a moment she thought she was dreaming.

"I don't know." She shook her head, tongue numb. "I can hear everything. Animals. People. Everyone. Inside my head."

The old man frowned. "Their thoughts?"

"Hai. But it's like everyone shouting ... all at once. It's deafening."

He stroked his moustache, slow and thoughtful. "The cause?"

"I don't know. My father never told me about this. No one told me anything."

"I do not mean to cause you alarm..." the old man paused, licked his lips, "but I think you caused an earthquake today."

She stared at him, jaw slightly agape, blinking slow.

"Do you not remember the ground shaking?" Daichi asked. "Trees shivering like frightened children as you fell to your knees?"

"No." A hollow whisper. "G.o.ds..."

"Can you not hold it at bay? Control it?"

Yukiko fixed the old man in a bleary stare. The sake was heat in her veins and in her cheeks, pulling her eyelids closed. Legs trembling. Mouth dry. "My father ... I think perhaps he smoked lotus to keep it quiet. Liquor seems to dull it, too."

"That seems a dangerous road to walk. One that does not end in answers."

"I know it," she sighed, her tongue clumsy on her teeth. "Truly, I do. I don't want to hide in the bottom of a bottle."

"Kaori told me of the birds. The ones who killed themselves against your bedroom walls."

"Buruu said it was because I was screaming. Inside their heads."

"And now you say you can hear not just the thoughts of beasts, but of people too?"

Yukiko remained silent, awful certainty of Daichi's destination building in her gut.

"Leave aside the earthquake for a moment," he said. "The fact you may shake the very island beneath our feet when you get upset. Think for a moment what else might happen if you lose control again."

"Are you saying-"

"I say nothing. I simply wonder if next time, it is not birds trying to silence your screams, but people." The old man gestured around him. "Us."

"G.o.ds..."

"Indeed."

Yukiko blinked, cold dread in her belly. She hadn't even considered the thought ...

"I don't know what to do, Daichi," she breathed, dragging her fingers through her hair. "I have n.o.body to ask how to control this thing. No teacher. No father. Nothing."

Daichi steepled his hands beneath his chin, brows drawn together in thought. A long silence pa.s.sed, his frown growing darker as moments turned to minutes.

"I did not wish to tell you this," he finally said. "I should have spoken of it after the incident with the birds, but I hoped the matter not as grave as now I know it to be. And in truth, we cannot afford to lose you, Yukiko."

"I don't understand..."

"I know where you can find your answers. If answers exist to be found anywhere at all." The old man coughed, wiped his mouth on his sleeve with a grimace. "A monastery on the isle of Shabishii, far north of here, near the Imperium's edge. It was said the monks there kept the mysteries of the world inked on their flesh."

"To keep them secret?"

"To keep them safe. Their order began with the rise of the Tenma Emperors, when the Imperial Censors first started burning 'indecent' literature. The monks tattooed themselves with ancient arts and the deepest secrets, that they would not be lost to the Imperium's hubris. Much harder to kill a living man than incinerate a paper scroll."

Yukiko raised an eyebrow. "But what happened when a monk died?"

"I do not know." Daichi coughed again, rubbed at his throat as if pained. "I do not even know if the monastery still stands. I have heard rumor it was destroyed. Others say it is cursed."

"People say the same about these mountains."

"Precisely," Daichi smiled. "I am hoping the Painted Brotherhood may encourage those rumors for the same reason we do. To keep away unwanted eyes."

"Painted Brotherhood..."

"So they were named."

Yukiko drew a deep, shivering breath, dragged her knuckles across her mouth. Beyond the sake blur, deep through the haze she'd plunged herself into, she could still hear it. The cacophony. The inferno waiting inside her head.

"But the wedding..." she said. "Aisha. The dynasty ... I can't leave now."

"You see our dilemma. We need you and Buruu more than ever. And in truth, if all that was at stake were a few more birds, I could risk your presence here. But the people of this village ... the wives and daughters and husbands and sons..."

"I'm a danger to them."

The old man sighed, staring at empty palms as if they might hold the answers he sought.

"Hai."

"So risk flying north on what might be a fool's errand, or stay here and risk the entire village? Those are my options?"

A faint smile. "n.o.body said being the Stormdancer would be easy."

Yukiko pressed her knuckles to her temples, the throb pulsing just below the sake lull. Misery and pain and the swelling tide, pushing them all back with the simple, undeniable truth-that the choice Daichi presented was no choice at all. The path was clear. She need only start walking. And every second she wasted was another second the wedding drew closer. But still ...

But still ...

"We'll be swift," she said. "Fly to Shabishii as fast as we can, find what truths we may. At the very least, it'll be a lot quieter in the sky."

Daichi nodded. "You will be back in time to stop Aisha's wedding, with a little luck."

"You know what they say." A tired, colorless smile. "Kitsune looks after his own..."

"So I will pray."

Daichi reached out and took her hand. His fingers were callused, faint liver spots and wrinkles decades deep. She met his eyes, and for a moment, she saw past the mask he wore, the iron he encased his soul inside. He seemed terribly old, bent beneath his burdens, tired beyond all want of sleep. His smile was frayed at the hem.

"I know what it is we are asking of you, Yukiko. I see the toll it takes."

She looked into his eyes, searching for a hint of scorn and finding none. The words inside her were like living things, bubbling in her throat, demanding to be aired. She forced her lips together, fighting a losing battle to keep them at bay. When finally they spilled forth, they were a whisper m.u.f.fled by the curtain of her hair.

"It's all weighing too heavy, Daichi." She took a shuddering breath, sighed. "Being this thing. This Stormdancer. I feel like an utter fraud. A little girl stamping her feet and screaming life isn't fair."

"You give people hope, Yukiko. The strength at the heart of all strength. The steps you take now, the first steps-they are always the hardest. But the footprints you leave in the earth behind you will be followed by thousands."

"I'm so afraid sometimes. I think about my father..." She shook her head. "I haven't shed a single tear for him, did you know that? He's dead and I can't even bring myself to cry."

"It is not fear that chases away your tears, Yukiko-chan." Daichi's voice was low, tinged at the edges with a charcoal rasp. "It is rage."

"Buruu says the same. He says it will burn me up inside."

"No." Daichi leaned forward, pinned her in his stare. "No, you listen to me, girl. Look around you. At this world they have left you. Red skies. Black rivers. Mountains of bones. You should be angry. You should be furious."

He took hold of her hand, squeezed it so tight her knuckles hurt.

"The time for fear is long since gone. It died with the last phoenix, the last b.u.t.terfly. It died when we traded the ease of the machine for the grace of our souls. Nothing will change if we cherish our fear as if it were a blessing. If we are afraid to tear down the old, and lose what we may in that unmaking, we will never build the new."

"I'm not sure I can be what you want me to be, Daichi."

The old man sat up straight, released his grip on her hands.

"I am sure," he said.

Reaching behind him, he lifted the ancient katana from his back, held it out on upturned palms. Yukiko caught her breath, eyes roaming the lacquer scabbard, the golden cranes embossed into gleaming wood. The words he spoke danced like static electricity upon her skin.

"I wielded this blade through many battles, none so great as the one before us. And so I give it to you, who need it now more than I."

"G.o.ds," she breathed. "I can't accept this, Daichi..."

"You can." He ran his hand across the hilt, a lingering caress of farewell. "And as I give you this gift, I give it a name. I name this blade 'Yofun.'"

"'Anger,'" she whispered.

"My gift to you, Yukiko-chan." He nodded. "Use it to cut away your fear, and leave nothing in its wake. Cherish it. And cherish this truth I speak to you now, if no other before or after: the greatest tempest Shima has ever known waits in the wings for you to call its name. Your anger can topple mountains. Crush empires. Change the very shape of the world."

He pressed the blade into her hand, watched her with cool eyes the color of steel.

"Your anger is a gift."

Kin sat alone on the rope bridge, feet dangling over the precipice, listening to the fading day. The transition never failed to fascinate him; the light's slow descent from copper to auburn, through dried blood and on to tar black. Tiny noises that would be lost in garish daylight, sharp and clear under the blanket of night.

When he was younger, locked inside his skin, the entire world was muted beneath the metal, the ever-turning chatter of his mechabacus. Chapterhouse Kigen had no windows, no way to tell night from day. The glow of cutting torches had been his dawn, flickering disks of halogen his stars. He was fourteen years old before he saw his first sunset, on the deck of the Thunder Child as they sailed from Kigen Bay. Even now, he could recall the tightness in his chest as that blinding globe sank toward the horizon, setting the entire island ablaze. All was flame and taut, black shadows, reaching out to him like the hands of old, forgotten friends. His breath had caught so completely in his lungs that for a terrifying moment, he thought the bellows in his skin had failed. That he was suffocating.

But in the Iishi, he could hear a thousand tiny voices amongst the whispering leaves. The wood beneath him sighing and shifting, the cries of night birds in search of prey, the song of insects amidst gentle fingers of wisteria vines. The soft beat of approaching footsteps.

He shot to his feet, heart in his throat. "Yukiko?"

"h.e.l.lo, Kin."

He reached out to her, awkward and stumbling and feeling entirely idiotic, gifting her a clumsy hug. She pressed her head against his chest and sighed.

"I was worried about you," he breathed.

As she turned her face up to his and smiled, he smelled something sharp and poisonous on her breath. Noticed a vacant glaze in her eyes. "I'm all right."

Reluctantly he released his hold, sat down on the footbridge again. Yukiko sat beside him, dangling her feet over the edge and swinging them back and forth like a child, eyes shining with the light of a falling sun. He saw her cheeks were slightly flushed, noticed she was carrying a bottle of sake in her hand. He tried not to stare at the katana strapped to her back.

"I thought you'd want to know." She took a pull from the bottle, closed her eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was strained. "Daichi and the council have voted. The False-Lifer will be kept alive. Locked up, of course. But they're not going to kill her."

"That's good." He glanced at the liquor again. "I'm glad."