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snatched from his mouth by the rushing wind, lingering long enough to spill over into me. I cannot explain it. Perhaps it was the link of thought between us. Perhaps I had forgotten the simple joy of the skies. But somehow, if only for a moment, his joy became mine.
    We swooped into the thing the boy named palace—a towering nest of stone stained by the blue-black pall lingering in the streets. Gardens with a vague and sickly air, a brook babbling somewhere amidst the graying green. Monkey-samurai with metal skins and shiny sticks rushing from the surrounding walls, from within the structure itself, aiming their pointed steel twigs in our direction. I roared once in warning as we came in to land, gravel crunching beneath my talons. Wings spread, hackles raised in threat, tail lashing as a whip before frightened livestock. And I felt the boy in my mind again, calm as summer dawn, filling me with the same.
    Fear nothing, great Koh. I will speak. They will listen.
    The boy slipped off my back, spoke with loud and clear voice. I could not understand the shaping of his words. Twisting and snarled in my ears; the language of bleating goats and filth-clad hogs. He spoke long, back and forth with the little samurai, voices rising and falling. It seemed the boy grew distressed for a time, thoughts filled with pleading, but finally some understanding filled the place where the jabber-words had rung. And the boy fell still, watching through my eyes as a handful of the men in their flimsy tin suits slipped back inside the nest, leaving us beneath the watchful stare of perhaps two dozen more.
    WHAT HAPPEN?
    The Sh ō gun is dead. He died four days ago.
    NO NEW MONKEY-KHAN?
    His sons do battle as we speak for the right to sit on the throne. Civil war is raging to the north, my friend. Brother against brother.
    STRONGEST RULE. THRONES BOUGHT WITH BLOOD. OLD KHAN MUST DIE FOR NEW KHAN TO RISE. FOR US AND YOU.
    One son seems to be favorite. His name is Tatsuya, though folk call him the Bull. He chases his brother north, but has left his wife here to speak in his stead. That he controls the Imperial Palace speaks well for his chances of ruling the country.
    AND SHE SPEAK YOU?
    I think—
    The doors to the monkey-child nest groaned wide, revealing a cadre of samurai in tabards the color of blood, armor the hue of midnight, hard, narrowed eyes. Long sticks of folded steel, bows and quivers brimming to burst with arrows. Marching four by four by four. And behind them walked a monkey-child female, smaller and sleeker, long hair blacker than the warrior’s armor bound in needlessly complicated knots and braids.
    She looked soft. Weak. Adorned and decorated, paint upon her face. I noted all the male monkey-children wore iron, carried steel, and yet the only weapon she bore was a fan fashioned of gold. And yet, in Jun’s chest, still I felt the twist of a blade, as surely as she had thrust one between his ribs. A sudden catch in his breath, a surge of butterflies in his stomach murmuring to mine. A sense of recollection, dusty with the weight of years. As he looked upon the monkey-child woman through my eyes, sharp as eagles, hungry as tigers, I think at last he remembered what true beauty was.
    He had seen it before.
    The woman stood atop stone stairs leading up into the nest, robes embroidered with prowling tigers. There was something akin to those jungle cats in her bearing; the way she looked us over, we two. Not astonished and bewildered as all the men about her, slack-jawed in their metal suits. No, she was predatory. Calculating. Perhaps even hungry.
    They spoke then. The boy and the woman. Words I did not understand. At one point, Jun laughed, bowed so low he nearly fell forward on his face. I could not fathom why. But the female spoke with a voice of strength, hiding a blood-red smile behind the fan of gold. And finally, she stepped aside, and gestured to her nest of stone and clay.
    She invites me inside. To speak further.
    TRUST