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  For Kath and Tony.

  Words fail.

  Your anger is a gift.

  —ARISTOTLE

  LOTUS WAR CHARACTER REFRESHER

  WHO THE HELLS ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE?

  Yukiko—A young girl with the ability to speak telepathically to animals (a gift called “the Kenning”). Commanded to capture a legendary thunder tiger by Shima’s cruel Shōgun, Yukiko ended up forging a powerful bond with the beast, whom she named Buruu. While lost in the wilderness, she joined the ranks of a guerrilla rebellion, known as the Kagé (meaning “Shadows”), and decided to take retribution on the Shōgun for his crimes against her family.

  Last known whereabouts: after murdering Shōgun Yoritomo, Yukiko fled Kigen city. She returned forty-nine days later and delivered an impassioned speech, urging the populace to rise against the government and the Lotus Guild.

  Buruu—A thunder tiger (aka arashitora). Yukiko’s best friend and loyal companion. Buruu is the last of his race in Shima. His feathers were clipped by Shōgun Yoritomo, and until he molts again, he cannot fly without the aid of mechanical wings built for him by the Guild Artificer, Kin.

  Last known whereabouts: with Yukiko.

  Kin—An Artificer (engineer) of the Lotus Guild who crashed with Yukiko in the Iishi Mountains. In defiance of all he had been raised to believe, Kin built mechanical wings for Buruu, allowing the thunder tiger and Yukiko to escape the Shōgun’s clutches.

  Last known whereabouts: surrounded by guards in Kigen city as Yukiko flew to freedom.

  Masaru—aka “The Black Fox of Shima.” Hunt Master of the Imperial Court. Yukiko’s father. Drunkard. Gambler. Lotus-addict. But he turned out to be a decent fellow, underneath it all.

  Last known whereabouts: Masaru was shot and killed by Yoritomo-no-miya during a showdown in Kigen’s Market Square.

  Kasumi—Hunter of the Imperial Court. Masaru’s lover.

  Last known whereabouts: Kasumi was killed during Masaru’s jailbreak. She died in his arms.

  Akihito—A hunter of the Imperial Court. Masaru’s right-hand man, and Yukiko’s friend since childhood. His leg was badly wounded during Masaru’s jailbreak.

  Last known whereabouts: limping to Kigen docks with Michi in order to flee the city after the Shōgun’s assassination.

  Yoritomo-no-miya—Shōgun of Shima. Daimyo of the Tiger clan. Last son of the Kazumitsu Dynasty, a familial line that has ruled the Shima Imperium for two centuries. A lunatic who came too young to power, and was ultimately consumed by it.

  Last known whereabouts: Yoritomo was slain telepathically by Yukiko and Masaru during their showdown in the Market Square.

  Aisha—Yoritomo’s sister. Last daughter of the Kazumitsu Dynasty. Secret ally of the Kagé rebellion (a fact discovered by Yoritomo before his death).

  Last known whereabouts: Yoritomo alluded to a grim fate for his beloved sibling, but whether Aisha survived his retribution remains unknown.

  Michi—A maidservant of the Lady Aisha. Secret member of the Kagé rebellion. Swordmaster.

  Last known whereabouts: making her way to Kigen docks with Akihito in order to flee the city after the Shōgun’s assassination.

  Hiro—aka “The Boy with the Sea-Green Eyes.” Iron Samurai. Member of the Kazumitsu Elite (the Shōgun’s personal bodyguard). Hiro formed a romantic relationship with Yukiko while she was resident in the Shōgun’s palace, but ultimately betrayed her when he discovered she was plotting against his lord and master, Yoritomo.

  Last known whereabouts: during a bloody battle in Kigen arena, Buruu tore Hiro’s arm off and Yukiko stabbed him in the chest. He was left for dead on the arena floor.

  Hideo—Imperial Spymaster, master of intrigue in the Shōgun’s court. Hiro’s uncle.

  Last known whereabouts: Hideo was eaten by rats during Masaru’s jailbreak.

  Daichi—Leader of the Kagé rebellion. A former member of the Kazumitsu Elite who rebelled against the Shōgunate after Yoritomo mutilated his daughter, Kaori. While in Yoritomo’s service, Daichi murdered Yukiko’s mother—a warning to Masaru when he refused to obey the Shōgun’s will.

  Last known whereabouts: the Kagé stronghold in the Iishi Mountains.

  Kaori—Lieutenant of the Kagé rebellion. Daichi’s daughter. She bears an awful knife scar on her face, courtesy of Yoritomo-no-miya.

  Last known whereabouts: the Kagé stronghold in the Iishi Mountains.

  Kensai—Second Bloom of the Lotus Guild, and Voice of the Guild in Kigen city. One of the most powerful and influential Guildsmen alive. Kin’s adoptive uncle.

  Last known whereabouts: Lotus Guild Chapterhouse in Kigen city.

  Isao—A young member of the Kagé rebellion. He spied on Yukiko while bathing, discovering she bore the tattoo of the Shōgun on her arm.

  Last known whereabouts: the Kagé stronghold in the Iishi Mountains.

  Atsushi—A young member of the Kagé rebellion. Isao’s partner in crime during the “Affair of the Bathhouse Wall.”

  Last known whereabouts: the Kagé stronghold in the Iishi Mountains.

  CONTENTS

  Title page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Mons of Shima Imperium

  Map of Shima Islands

  Map of Kigen City

  Epigraph

  Lotus War character refresher

  Part 1: Skin

  Prologue

  1. The Girl All Guildsmen Fear

  2. Drowning

  3. The First and Only Reason

  4. Doppelganger

  5. Chrysalis

  6. Downside Up

  7. A Pale Inferno

  8. No One

  9. A Heart Exhausted

  10. Salt and Copper

  11. Desolation’s Edge

  12. Acres of Skin

  13. Proposal

  14. Intoxication

  Part 2: Tempest

  15. The Hour of the Phoenix

  16. Undertow

  17. The Sweetest Poison

  18. Contours

  19. Catching the Sky

  20. A Sigh or Two

  21. Webs and Spiders

  22. Skinned

  23. Deluge

  24. Mercies

  25. Impetus

  26. Footprints in the Snow

  27. A Mountain of Bones

  28. Moving Pictures

  29. A Trembling Earth

  30. A Moment of Empty

  31. Precipice

  32. Tremors

  33. Between Bending and Breaking

  34. The Jagged Shore

  35. Children of the Grave

  36. Take

  Part 3: Ashes

  37. Offerings

  38. Terminus

  39. Fragile

  40. Fodder for the Judge

  41. A Thousand Diamonds

  42. Pulse

  43. Not Falling

  44. The Hammer Falls

  45. Ten Thousand Years

  46. One Hundred Degrees

  47. Crescendo

  48. Stillness

  49. Addition and Subtraction

  50. Sensation

  51. The Quiet Dark

  52. Illumination

  53. Phoenix Fire

  54. The Cruelest Storm

  55. Army of the Sun

  56. Womb

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Jay Kristoff

  About the
Author

  Copyright

  PART 1

  SKIN

  “The prelude was Void,

  And unto Void they return. Black as mother’s womb.”

  So spoke he the first; holy Lord Izanagi, Maker and Father,

  Unto the second; great Lady Izanami, Mother of All Things,

  Not his to foresee, the doom of all mortal men,

  Would also be hers.

  —from the Book of Ten Thousand Days

  PROLOGUE

  Now witness the end of the beginning.

  A ghost-pale girl, sixteen years old, wisps of dark hair and warm scarlet scrawled across her face. A smiling tyrant, stained with his own sister’s blood, a smoking iron-thrower in a white-knuckle grip. The pair standing in the crowded Market Square as children’s ashes swirl and dance in the gulf between them. And she stretches out her hand, and opens her mouth, and speaks the last words the tyrant will ever hear.

  “Let me show you what one little girl can do.”

  Fifty-five days ago. Almost two months since the last son of the Kazumitsu Dynasty perished at her hands. So much chaos since then. The earth shifting beneath our feet. The threads beginning to unravel. One by one by one.

  Our war of conquest against the round-eyed gaijin collapsed as news of the Shōgun’s death spread, the threat and promise of a now-empty throne coalescing in every clanlord’s mind. And as the shadow of civil war reared over the Seven Isles, the Lotus Guild urged only calm. Obeisance to their puppets in the Tiger clan. Threatening embargoes of their precious fuel—the blood-red chi driving the Shōgunate’s iron heart—to any who disobeyed their will.

  Then came the truth of how that fuel was made.

  The words that would begin the avalanche were transmitted over the pirate radio frequencies of the Kagé rebels. The Shadows revealed that inochi—the wondrous fertilizer used on blood lotus fields across the Seven Isles—had been manufactured with the remains of gaijin prisoners of war. And Shima’s people awoke to the horror that the Imperium, the technology driving it, their entire way of life—all had been watered with innocent blood.

  Like flames on long-dead leaves after a breathless summer, or ripples on still water after rain’s first falling, the riots took seed and spread. Outraged. Bloody. But brief. Brutally suppressed beneath the heels of Iron Samurai still loyal to the vacant throne. Uneasy peace settled over the clan metropolises, broken glass crunching underfoot, as the forty-nine days of official mourning passed in shivering, breathless silence.

  Until she returned.

  Yukiko. Arashi-no-odoriko. Stormdancer. Astride the mighty thunder tiger Buruu, fire in her eyes, lightning crawling along his clockwork wings. Flying to every capital, from the Floating Palace in Danro to the Market Square in Kigen city. Her voice a clarion call. Urging the people to open their eyes and open their minds and close the fingers on their hands.

  How I wish I could have been there.

  How I wish I could have heard her speak. But since the moment Yoritomo’s corpse hit the cobbles, I have been running. Fleeing Kigen in a trail of blue-white flame. Abandoning the burnished brass I had worn all my life in some fallow field, my touch lingering on its surface as if I were saying farewell to my oldest friend. Long miles of empty road under my bleeding feet, endless skies of bloody red before my burning eyes, flesh hardened and torn from the weeks it has taken to make it back to the Iishi wilds.

  Back to her.

  And here I am. Almost there, now. The Lotus Guildsman who betrayed all he knew, all he was. Who gifted a crippled thunder tiger with metal wings to bear him from his prison. Who helped a lone girl slay the Kazumitsu Dynasty’s last son and plunge this nation into the tempest. Traitor is the name I will wear in the histories. Kioshi was the name I inherited after my father died.

  But in truth, my name is Kin.

  I remember what it was to be encased in metal skin. To see the world through blood-red glass. To stand apart and above and beyond and wonder if there was nothing more. And even now, here in the depths of Shima’s last wilderness, the dogs closing in around me, I can hear the whispers of the mechabacus in my head, feel the phantom weight of that skin on my back and on my bones, and part of me misses it so badly it makes my chest hurt.

  I remember the night I learned the truth of myself—my future laid bare in the Chamber of Smoke. I remember the Inquisitors coming for me, swathed in black and soundless as cats, telling me it was time to see my What Will Be. And even as the screams of those brethren who failed the Awakening echoed in my head, I felt no fear. I clenched my fists, thought of my father, and vowed I would make him proud. That I would Wake.

  Thirteen years old and they call you a man.

  I had never watched the sun kiss the horizon, setting the sky on fire as it sank below the lip of the world. Never felt the whisper-gentle press of a night wind on my face. Never known what it was to belong or betray. To refuse or resist. To love or to lose.

  But I knew who I was. I knew who I was supposed to be.

  Skin was strong.

  Flesh was weak.

  I wonder now, how that boy could have been so blind.

  1

  THE GIRL ALL GUILDSMEN FEAR

  Three Guild warships rumbled across a blood-red sky with all the finesse of fat drunkards lunging toward the privy. They were capital warships of the “ironclad” series; the heaviest dreadnoughts constructed in the Midland yards. Balloons the color of flame, shuriken-thrower turrets studding their inflatables, vomiting black exhaust into opiate skies.

  The flagship leading the trio was a hundred feet long, three red banners embroidered with lotus blooms trailing at her stern. Her name flowed down her bow in broad, bold kanji—a warning to any fool who would stand in her way.

  LADY IZANAMI’S HUNGER.

  If Brother Jubei felt any trepidation about serving on a ship named for the Dark Mother’s appetites, he hid it well. He stood at the stern, warm inside the brass shell of his atmos-suit despite the freezing wind. Trying to still the butterflies in his stomach, quiet his pounding heart. Repeating the mantra: “skin is strong, flesh is weak, skin is strong, flesh is weak,” seeking his center. Yet try as he might, he couldn’t still the discontent ringing inside his head.

  The fleet’s captain stood at the railing, surveying the Iishi Mountains below. His atmos-suit was decorated with ornate designs, brass fixtures and pistons embossed with steel-gray filigree. A mechabacus clicked and chittered on his chest; a device of counting beads and vacuum tubes, singing the tuneless song of windup insects. A dozen desiccated tiger tails hung from the spaulders covering the captain’s shoulders. They were rumored to have been a gift from the great Fleetmaster of the Tora Chapterhouse, Old Kioshi himself.

  The captain’s name was Montaro, though his crew preferred to call him “Scourge of the Gaijin.” He was a veteran of the Morcheba invasion, had commanded the Guild fleet supporting Shōgunate ground troops against the round-eye barbarians across the Eastborne Sea. But when the war effort had begun disintegrating in the wake of the Shōgun’s assassination, Chapterhouse Kigen had recalled the captain and set him tracking a new foe, back on Shiman shores. To Brother Jubei’s great pride, of all the newly Awakened Shatei in Kigen, Second Bloom Kensai had selected him to serve as the Scourge’s new aide.

  “Do you require anything, Captain?” Jubei stood at the Scourge’s back, a respectful distance away, eyes downcast.

  “A sniff of our quarry would suffice.” Faint annoyance in the crackling buzz that passed for the captain’s voice. “Other than that, this weak flesh abides.” He touched a switch, spoke into his wrist. “Do you see anything up there, Shatei Masaki?”

  “No movement, Captain.” The lookout’s reply was faint, despite him being perched only thirty feet above their heads. “But this forest canopy is thick as fog. Even with telescopics, we’re hard-pressed to pierce it.”

  “Clever rabbit,” the Scourge hissed. “He’s heard our engines and gone to ground.”

  Jubei wa
tched a spire of rock drift past their starboard; a black iceberg in a sea of maple and cedar. Thin cloud clung to the mountaintops, peaks crusted in snow, the rumble of engines and heavy thupthupthup of propellers echoing in the forest beneath them. Autumn cupped the Iishi Mountains at the edge of a cold embrace, the colors of rust waiting at the edge of the stage.

  The Scourge sighed, hollow and metallic.

  “I know it to be the impulse of my weak flesh, but I confess I missed these skies.”

  Jubei blinked back his surprise, wondering if he should engage his commanding officer in idle chatter. After long empty moments, the young Guildsman decided it would be impolite not to respond, speaking with hesitance.

  “… How long were you stationed in Morcheba, Captain?”

  “Eight years. Eight years with nothing but blood-drinkers and skinthieves for prey.”

  “Is it true the skies above the round-eye lands are blue?”

  “No.” The Scourge shook his head. “Not anymore. Closer to mauve now.”

  “I would enjoy seeing them one day.”

  “Well, the sooner we butcher our rabbit, the sooner we get back there.” Gauntleted fingers drummed the wooden railing. “I’d hoped to run him down before he reached the Iishi. But he’s resourceful, this one.”

  Jubei looked at the ships around them, bristling with weaponry and mercenary marines. The discontent rapped at the inside of his teeth, demanding to be let out for air.

  “Forgive me, Captain,” he ventured. “I know Old Kioshi’s son is a traitor. I know he must be punished for crafting the thunder tiger’s wings, aiding in its escape. But this fleet … all this effort to kill one boy seems…”

  “Excessive?”

  “Hai.” A slow nod. “I have heard rumor that Old Kioshi and Second Bloom Kensai were as brothers. That Kensai-sama raised the traitor as his own son. But, forgive my temerity—does it not seem to you there is more important prey for us to be hunting?”

  “You speak of Yoritomo’s assassin.”