Free Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff

Yamagata peered at Yukiko, crouched by the bow. “You’re missing the view.”
“I’ve seen it.” Yukiko lifted her kerchief, scratched at her nose. “Chi pipelines, deadlands and blood lotus as far as the eye can see.”
“Ah, lotus.” Yamagata looked out over the swaying fields below. “Who would have thought that iron could grow on trees, eh? Lord Izanagi be praised.”
Akihito glanced up at the captain. “Business is good, then.”
“What do you think?” Yamagata grinned behind his breather. “A third of the country is hooked on bud smoke, and the rest drink lotus leaf tea. That plant is a blessing from the Maker God to anyone with eyes to see.” Yamagata started counting off on his fingers. “Anesthetics from its sap, toxins from its roots, rope and canvas from its rind. And from its seeds? The lifeblood of the whole damn country, my friend.”
He patted the Thunder Child’s rail.
“Fuel for sky-ships, ō-yoroi, motor-rickshaw, chainkatana and memory machines.” He laughed. “Anything the Guild Artificers can dream up. Without chi, we’d still be a mob of farmer clans feuding in the mud. Instead, we’re an Empire. Exploring the seas and conquering the skies. The most powerful nation in the history of the world.”
“Everything comes with a price,” Kasumi muttered. “You’ll see.”
Yamagata stared silently as she continued filling the hypos.
“She’s beautiful now, Captain-san. But in a few years this ship of yours is going to melt under the black rain. And though you’re probably safe with that breather, the chi fumes will see most of your crew in the gutters with the other blacklung beggars.” She sighed. “Even walking among the clouds, you must notice the weather growing hotter by the year? Or that the sun is bright enough to burn you blind if you look at it with your naked eye? Did you know the skies used to be blue once, Yamagata- san? Brilliant blue, like a gaijin’s eyes. And now?” Kasumi shook her head. “Red as your lotus. Red as blood.”
Yamagata looked at her sideways. “Not that it’s my business, but some might call that dangerous talk, Hunter.”
“Perhaps. But no more dangerous than ignoring what lotus is doing to this land.”
Yukiko peered over the Thunder Child’s railing, down through the filthy skies to the lotus farms stretched out below. The fields were an endless interlocking series of rectangular paddies, shrouded by choking scarlet pollen. A vast orange serpent stretched away into the distance; a hulking pipeline of corroded metal connecting the Kigen city refineries to a central collection hub in the midlands known as “First House.” Though the refineries in each capital city kept a measure of the chi they pro cessed on hand, the vast majority of it was flushed via rusted arteries to the seat of Guild power in Shima; a tithe to the masters of the fuel and technology that pumped the iron Shōgunate’s heart.
Alongside the pipeline ran lengths of rusting metal and sleepers of bleached wood; tracks for Shima’s combustion-driven railway. The snub-nosed hulk of a goods train was thundering away beneath them, retching a black, smoking trail from its snout as it wound its way back toward Kigen city. Before the advent of the sky-ships, rail had been the highway on which Shima’s most vital commerce sped. Foodstuffs, trade goods and common folk still rolled back and forth along the corroded lines every day, but for cargo as important as blood lotus or gaijin slaves, the sky was now the only way to travel.
The chi pipeline and railway lines were weeping scabs, crusted across the sweeping vista of lotus fields. But in some places, the landscape of swaying red and green was also pockmarked by dark stains; broad tracts of smoking, ashen soil, utterly devoid of life. Yukiko had been nine years old when she’d first seen the blackened scars from the air, the great swathes of land they covered. She had asked her mother where they came from.
Her mother had