The Last Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff Read Free Book Online Page B

sensual shivers flowing into him.
    “These are your cats, Lady? What are their names?”
    A long pause, the press of three stares upon his empty eyes.
    “Whisper and Silk,” the Lady finally replied.
    “Very pretty.”
    “You have excellent ears, Jun-san. Can you hear what color undergarments I wear?”
    A playful tone in the Lady’s voice, soft laughter as his cheeks flushed at the imposition of thoroughly unbecoming thoughts. He shivered again as she stroked the tomcat’s spine. Despite his upbringing, he felt a novice. Provincial and ignorant in the face of this Lady’s parlor games.
    She has changed so much  …
    “I hear the thoughts of beasts, Lady. The cats in your lap. The thunder tiger outside.”
    “… You are y ō kai-kin?”
    “Hai.”
    “I have never met one of your ilk before. I though perhaps you were legend.”
    “So it might one day be said of phoenix or henge and tanuki. So might it be said of all the spirit beasts of this land, if the Lotus Guild and their sickness are not stopped.”
    The Lady cleared her throat, attention refocused, the cats in her lap forgotten.
    “The Guild grows in power daily,” she said. “They buy ministers and magistrates with the iron coin their mechanical marvels bring them. They could be dangerous enemies. You have proof of their involvement in this sickness, Jun-san?”
    “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 Sh ō gun’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 Sh ō gun must stand beside them. The arashitora will not fight our battles for us.”
    “There is no Sh ō gun 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