Stormdancer Read Online Free PDF Page B

angry lotusflies. The words flowed as if known by rote; a snatch of scripture from the Book of Ten Thousand Days.
    “Soiled by Yomi’s filth,
The taint of the Underworld, Izanagi wept.
Seeking Purity,
The Way of the Cleansing Rite, The Maker God bathed.
And from these waters,
Were begat Sun, Moon and Storm. Walk Purity’s Way.”
    Another Purifier stepped forward, lit twin pilot flames at the blackened fixtures on its wrists and held them aloft to the crowd.
“Walk Purity’s Way!” it bellowed.
Approving cries rang out across the Burning Stones, the voices of fanatics among the mob drowning out the uneasy murmurs of the remainder. Akihito clenched his teeth and turned his back on the grim spectacle.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Yukiko tried to tell herself it was rage that turned her stomach to water, made her legs shake and stole the spit from her mouth.
She tried to tell herself that, but she knew better.
She looked up at Akihito, her face a mask, drawn and bloodless. Her voice trembled as she spoke.
“And you ask why I get in their way.”

5 Blackening
The heat was blistering.
    Yukiko and Akihito made their way through the squeezeways, over the refuse-choked gutters, past the grasping hands of a dozen blacklung beggars and down into Docktown; a cramped and weeping growth of low-rent tenements and rusting warehouses slumped in the shadow of the sky-ships. A broad wooden boardwalk stretched out over the black waters of the bay, hundreds of people shoving and weaving their way across the bleached timbers. The docking spires were thin metal towers, corroded by black rain. Hissing pipes and cables pumped hydrogen and the volatile lotus fuel, simply called “chi,” up to the waiting sky-ships. The towers swayed in the wind, creaking ominously whenever a ship docked or put out to the red again. Lotusmen swarmed in the air about them like brass corpseflies, the pipes coiled on their backs spitting out bright plumes of blue-white flame.
    Steam whistles shrieked in the distance; breakfast break for the workers slaving in Kigen’s sprawling nest of chi refineries. It was a well-known truth that most of the wretches sweating inside those walls were expected to die there. If the toxic fumes or heavy machinery didn’t end them, working twenty-hour shifts for barely more than a beggar’s salary probably would. The laborers were known as “karōshimen”— literally, men who kill themselves through overwork. It was ironic, given that many of them were little more than children. Flitting among grinding cogs and crunching gears that could snag and chew a stray lock of hair or an unwary hand without skipping a beat, soft flesh withering in the shadow of hard metal and blue-black smoke. Children turned old and feeble before they ever had a chance to be young.
    “Vwuch vwyy?” Akihito asked.
Yukiko sipped her broth and found she’d completely lost her appetite. “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” she murmured.
The giant stuffed the last of his cracker bowl into his mouth. Yukiko pointed
    in the direction of the eastern docks, furthest away from the cloud of smog and ash and reeking exhaust fumes.
“Is that . . . crab I smell?” The voice was weak, muffled against Akihito’s ribs.
“He lives!” The big man grinned, slinging his friend down off his shoulders and planting him in the street. Masaru squinted, eye swelling shut, long peppergray hair a bedraggled mess. His face was smeared with blood.
“Izanagi’s balls, my head.” He winced, rubbing the back of his skull. “What hit me?”
Akihito shrugged.
“Saké.”
“We didn’t drink that much . . .”
“Here, eat.” Yukiko offered her father the remainder of her breakfast. Grabbing the bowl, Masaru gulped it down as the crowd seethed around them. He swayed on his feet, looking for a moment as if the crab might make a break for freedom, then patted his stomach and belched.
“What the hells are we doing down here?” Masaru glared around the docks, one hand