The Last Stormdancer Read Free

father’s. They leaned forward, into the cancer and bedpan stink, the old Sh ō gun’s lips rasping against their ears.
    “We are here, Father,” said Tatsuya.
    “What would you have of us, Sh ō gun?” Riku asked.
    “One thing,” the old man breathed.
    “What is it?” asked the twins.
    “Forgiveness…”
    The old man inhaled once.
    Softly sighed.
    And there, he died.
    Riku stood, swift as blinking, the Bear’s knuckles white upon his katana hilt. Tatsuya stood slower, tears in his eyes, stare locked on his twin. The Bull’s hand drifted to his own sword, but his stance spoke of an unwillingness to draw it.
    His brother decided for him.
    A flash of folded steel, the ringing hymn of blade’s edge on scabbard’s lip, and Riku’s katana was in his hand. Tatsuya’s weapon was drawn a moment later, the young Lord barely warding off his brother’s blow. A bright rain of sparks, the ringing clash of steel on steel. Riku pressed, striking at his brother’s head, throat, chest. Each parry ringing a different note; a tiny orchestra, bright and gleaming and deadly.
    The brothers moved as twins would, mirroring the other’s advance, strike, lunge, feint. Breathless in but a moment, both hearts pumping with the knowledge that the victor of this fray would sit upon the Four Thrones, would rule the Imperium from the tip of Shabishii to the shores of Seidai, while the other burned beside their father on the pyre. The Bull ducked a vicious blow, sidestepped another, smashing his brother’s katana aside as the Bear overextended. But instead of a counterstrike, Tatsuya took a moment to breathe soft words through gritted teeth.
    “Not like this, brother,” he said, gesturing to their father’s corpse. “Not here.”
    Riku clenched his jaw, face grim. He struck again, blindingly swift, sparks lighting dark eyes as his katana danced. Again. Again.
    “Better it be just you and I, brother,” he said. “Just the two of us, without the nation beside us.”
    Another succession of blows. Furniture smashed, tables upturned, vases shattered. Sparks and spit and blood.
    Ragged breath.
    Narrowed eyes.
    Pause.
    “You speak true, brother.” Tatsuya nodded, chest heaving. “But will you murder your own twin at the foot of your father’s deathbed for the right to sit in his still-warm chair?”
    Riku’s grip upon his katana slackened. He glanced at the body of the man who had made him. The portrait of his mother over the bed—killed in the act of bringing him and Tatsuya into this world. Once the brothers had been all to each other; the first nine months of their lives floating in the same lightless warmth, drifting off to sleep to the song of each other’s heartbeats.
    And now?
    And now …
    “… No. I will not.”
    Riku backed away, lowering his sword, slow and measured, eyes upon his twin’s. But Tatsuya made no attempt at treachery, lowering his own katana and glancing at the body now cooling between the sheets. He wiped the back of one hand across sweat-slick lips.
    “We will burn him,” Tatsuya said. “Bury him. Grieve him. As honorable sons should.”
    “And then?”
    “And then…” Tatsuya paused, meeting his brother’s eyes.
    They spoke as one, a single word, floating in the air like lead.
    “War.”
    *   *   *
    I am hoping you will help me.
    Our Khan peered at the boy who could not peer back. I noted throughout all the roaring, all the thunder and howling wind, the little winter sparrow on the monkey-child’s shoulder remained calm as millpond water. Quiet confidence mirroring the boy on which it perched. Eyes flitting over the thunder tigers around the Khan’s throne, drifting ever back toward mine.
    —HELP YOU?—
    The Khan did not speak, yet his words were a tempest in our minds. Somehow, through the boy, we all of us could hear him as if he roared with lungs and beak and tongue.
    —WHY WE HELP YOU, MONKEY-CHILD?—
    The boy stepped forward, covered his fist and bowed low. I stood close,