by Stone, C. L.
“You should get more comfortable with him,” he said. “He’s yours for life, and he’ll probably outlive you.” He brushed his fingers over the frame of the cage. “But I think he knows now we’re not enemies.”
I curled up with my arms around my knees, looking up at him as he stood by the cage. “Are you nervous?” I asked. “About the registration?”
“I should be,” he said. “Honestly, I’m glad we made an agreement. I don’t think I’ll be the one getting in on my own.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Did you see the others Mrs. Satsu picked?” he asked and then smirked. “I’m a sow with swans.”
My face heated. “That’s how I felt coming in here.”
He squinted at me and then moved away from the table to kneel on the futon nearby. “Are you kidding? You’re leagues ahead of everyone else here. It didn’t surprise me at all why she’d pick someone like you.”
The heat radiated through me, reaching every part of my skin. I covered a cheek with my hand. “No...,” I mumbled, wanting to say something humble, but his words surprised me. He was handsome in his own way, with his high cheekbones and sharp nose. His dark hair was tied back into a bun at the base of his head, and locks of it framed his angled jaw.
He reached out to me, taking my hand from my face and showing me a lopsided smile. “I was going to come back to see how you were, you know. After finishing with registration.”
“To see me?”
He smoothed his thumb across my palm in a gentle massage. “I couldn’t believe you wouldn’t listen to me about the bird.” He looked over his shoulder at the Taka, who was making clicking noises, puffing out his white feathers, and settling in to sleep. “You picked up so quickly on how valuable he was. You just didn’t know how to catch him like I did. Can you imagine what we could do if we went off and became traders together? I couldn’t sway you once you were determined.”
I gently pulled my hand back after he’d been holding on to it, looking at my own palm. “I was cutting you out of it,” I said quietly. “It was selfish.”
“You were desperate,” he said quietly. “I just didn’t realize how much. You seemed pretty okay since you had the house, but I didn’t realize until later, when I talked to others in the village, how bad things had gotten for you.”
“They knew?”
“They realized when you started trading healthy chickens for rice during the late winter. It was a bad deal, but you needed rice that would last longer than one cooked bird.”
I thought I should feel embarrassed, but to me, it had felt like just a chicken, and a sensible choice during a winter that lasted too long. I had done the best I could with what I’d had.
I breathed out heavily through my nose and then turned from him, lowering myself back down to the futon. I placed my head on a pillow, propping it up with an arm. “And now we’re here.”
“Which is why I think you’ll win this,” he said. “Not just because you’re beautiful. You deserve it more than most. At least more than I do.”
“I don’t know if the emperor selects people based on how hungry they are.”
“He should,” he said, settling into the futon behind me. “Even if none of us make it, maybe it was good it has all happened the way it has anyway.” He lowered his voice a little and whispered, “I wish I’d come back to the village sooner...”
I didn’t respond, too lost in thought. I listened to him breathing slowly and occasionally fidgeting to keep himself awake, and I fell asleep to the thought that Ryuu would have come back for me.
CONSPIRACY
THE NEXT MORNING, THERE was a terrible clatter of metal against wood, rattling and scraping. The Taka was startled and rustled in his cage before tipping over and falling flat to the bottom, then fluttering and making a clamor trying to right himself.
But he wasn’t the source of the original clattering. The light was dim, the dawn not bright enough, and the lamps had gone out. After sitting up, I had trouble orienting myself to where the noise was coming from.
Sota stood immediately, foregoing putting on a kimono robe and instead wearing just the pants. He went to the paper door and slid it open, leaning out into the hallway. He peered out.
To my surprise, Shima materialized next to me. He was bright-eyed, perhaps having stayed up to give Sota a chance to sleep. He too wore nothing but kimono pants.
Ryuu sat up, putting on his kimono and rising to his knees near Shima and me. “What’s going—”
Without looking back at us, Sota quickly held up a hand to indicate that we should remain quiet. He stared down the hallway and then, slowly, moved backward into the room. He left the door open and stood beside it like a guard, keeping an eye on us. He put a finger to his lips, again motioning to us to keep quiet, and then pointed to his ear to tell us to listen.
Voices carried from down the hallway. A man’s deep voice became louder. “Witnesses reported overhearing conspiratorial assassination plots. You’re to be taken in for questioning.”
Ryuu reached for my hand, holding it, as if ready to tug me away at a moment’s notice.
I swallowed thickly.
“Who accuses us?” a male voice spoke.
“We received a letter. Get up. You’ll be coming with us. Resist and you’ll be executed without trial.”
I lowered myself to the floor, on my back, stunned to be hearing this. Ryuu and Shima looked over at me, Ryuu holding on to my hand, and held so tightly. I’d no strength.
A letter. It could have been someone else who had written it, but that was far too much of a coincidence.
What were the chances? Especially people in the same house.
Had I been right to say something? Had it been the right thing to do to send Sota out to handle this? I felt the blood drain from my face. Sota had to have known the names were those of Mrs. Satsu’s own guests. That was why he hadn’t told me.
If they learned it was I who had said something, they’d come after me.
Sota quietly closed the door and came to us, whispering, “They’re taking them both, the student and escort.”
“Conspiracy?” Ryuu asked. “What’s this?”
“They conspired to eliminate competition. That could have meant you three or someone else, but completely dishonorable. The punishment will be severe, and it will be swift. They will be presented as an example to everyone to show that such things will not be tolerated.”
I thought about what Sota had told me about enemies of the emperor the night before. When I had written the letter, the person had been unknown, someone else I couldn’t see. It shocked me to realize such a person had been inside the home of Mrs. Satsu, and that I might have looked that person in the face just the night before.
“But do we know that was what they were actually talking about?” I whispered, so softly I wasn’t sure they’d hear me. I was still on my back, gazing up at them, not finding the strength to move. “What if Mrs. Satsu finds—”
Sota quickly hovered over me, putting a finger to my lips to quiet me.
His face was calm like before, but there was a brilliant seriousness to his eyes, the only clue to his emotions. “She had been careless, and the maids had overheard similar talk from them. You should be just as careful. Threatening lives isn’t tolerated in this competition. And it is against the will of the emperor to stand idly by and allow it to happen. To do nothing, to neglect to report it, is as dishonorable as acting on such deeds.”
“What if they are released? Or their families find out?”
“No matter what you think they may do to you, the emperor can do far worse. That’s his will. But you are right. We need to be very careful.”
I couldn’t imagine what might be worse. But then I realized I had been wrong to keep what had happened to myself. I had been risking the necks of Ryuu and Shima, and that wasn’t fair. Yet I’d risked them as much as myself in this matter.
When the commotion had settled, I didn’t want to get up. So
ta left, and Ryuu and Shima went about washing their faces and waking themselves fully. Ryuu let the Taka out of his cage, and the bird took flight instantly to the window and went out.
Sota brought us tea and something he called egg cake, which was a sweet bread with an egg baked on top.
I couldn’t eat. Guilt weighed heavily on me, about one of the students being eliminated so quickly, but mostly about the guys and how I’d put them in danger, especially if I had been wrong in what I thought I’d heard. I didn’t think I could look Mrs. Satsu in the eye if she came to us and asked what had happened. They might have been conspiring to kill, but Mrs. Satsu had one fewer student now.
And should we trust her if she’d allowed someone in who was willing to go to such lengths?
I never saw Mrs. Satsu that day. While the others took turns in the library or using the schoolroom to practice dance or talk politics, Sota instead brought me books and paper, ink stone and ink sticks to stack on the table in our rooms. “We will keep to ourselves for now,” he said.
Perhaps that was for my benefit. Ryuu said I looked as pale as the futon’s sheets. I wondered if this made it appear to the others that we were guilty in some way.
We stayed in our room, and after breakfast, Sota put away the futon and began our lessons. Ryuu was dressed similarly to myself, with a common blue kimono. Shima kept the kimono top off.
“You should wear it,” Sota said.
“It’s uncomfortable,” Shima said.
Sota went over, taking up the kimono robe and presenting it to Shima. “Is it the material?”
“It feels constricting. I’m not used to it.”
Sota nodded and continued to hold the kimono out to him. “There will be times where you must wear one, if you continue down this path. If you stay with her...” He nodded toward me.
Shima looked over, his dark eyes resting on my face. He studied me for a minute. “I will stay with her.”
“Then you should learn to wear kimono. But I’ll also look for more suitable material. Something more comfortable for you.”
Shima took the kimono and put his arms through the sleeves, loosely tying the robe.
Sota stood in front of us and motioned with his hands for us to focus on him. “Sit,” he said. “On the floor.”
Ryuu, Shima and I looked at each other and began to lower ourselves to the floor.
As we did, Sota snapped his fingers sharply and made us both pause. “No,” he said. And then he demonstrated. He stood tall and then dropped instantly to his knees and rested on his heels. “You don’t squat and then sit. You kneel, then sit.”
Perhaps because we didn’t have such formal lessons out in the country, Shima and I struggled not to sit how we’d done out of habit. It took twenty minutes before we mastered sitting, and even then, it still felt unnatural to us. Ryuu had an easier time, but it took him a couple of tries as well.
“You’re kidding me,” Ryuu said, sitting on his heels on the floor. He rolled his head back in frustration. “You brought us here to show us how to kneel properly? What else are we behind on?”
“Nearly everything,” Sota said. “We have to start at the beginning.”
Ryuu called it ridiculous to relearn how to walk, sit and rise, but I was grateful for the simple lessons while I couldn’t stop thinking about the student who had been taken. I threw myself into Sota’s lessons just to keep from feeling the guilt.
When we finally stopped kneeling, when my knees were too sore to continue, Sota had us begin reading out of the texts he’d selected for us. When he left to get us lunch, I noticed Shima’s book was still on page one. I glanced at the title—it was a children’s book on table manners.
Shima’s eyes looked over the page, but he didn’t seem to focus.
“Is something wrong?” I asked him quietly. Ryuu was sitting at the table, turning pages in his book and ignoring us.
Shima glanced over at him and then looked at me. “Dr. Aoi never brought books to my house. I’ve not had to practice reading for a long time.”
I hadn’t realized Dr. Aoi had done so much for me. I thought about his wrinkled hands and kind eyes, and the piles of books he’d stacked on my table. “Then you quit school, too? After...” I didn’t want to mention what had happened to our parents.
Shima pressed his lips together and closed the book with a snap. “I don’t think I should work on this. Two weeks is not enough time to catch up with what you two will be working on.”
I took the book from him and opened it up, glancing over the words. “I need to learn this, too,” I said. “Let me read it out loud.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be here,” Shima said.
“We need each other,” I said. “We’ve three times the chance to get in.” I put a hand on his arm. We’d come so far, and after what had happened, after I had been so isolated, ignoring everyone else, I realized he had been right. “Shima,” I said quietly. “We’re all going to try. And if none of us gets in, fine. We’ll go home. But that doesn’t mean we part ways then, either, okay?”
He gazed over my face. “Even if we go home?”
I nodded, sure of it. “I won’t go back to keeping to myself. I know now that it was wrong of me. Selfish. But if we get in, if the emperor brings in you or me or Ryuu, we’ll need you to wear the robe sometimes, and sometimes to sit at a table and eat properly. We all have to learn to do so, so we aren’t alone when we go in.”
He pressed his lips together tightly and nodded. “Then if you’ll read to me, I’ll listen.” He looked over my shoulder at Ryuu and then squinted at him. “What?”
I turned, finding Ryuu watching us.
He pointed to me. “And that’s why you’ll be the one to get in,” he said and then went back to his book.
I didn’t want to say what I was thinking, that we’d be lucky to survive it at all, especially after what had happened that morning.
ASSETS
I WAS AWOKEN ROUGHLY by Sota shaking me. The room was dark, the only light coming from the open window casting a soft glow.
Sota’s placid face was outlined in this glow, and for a moment, he didn’t look like himself. Ryuu had fallen asleep next to me.
I blinked up at him, looking around the room. “Where’s Shima?”
“He wanted to sleep with the oxen. I don’t think he’s slept away from them for a long time.”
I worried about Shima. He said he wanted to be here, but if he was chosen, he couldn’t go back and forth to stay with the oxen. Protocol within the court would probably not include sleeping in even the most royal of stables.
Sota knelt next to me and kept a finger over his lips to keep me silent before I could ask any more questions. “A letter has been delivered on your behalf,” he said.
I did want to ask more, but it was clear we weren’t safe in the room we were in. Mrs. Satsu was right about being careful about whom to trust. There had been no way for us to know how serious it was until that first encounter. Perhaps I could count myself lucky to have joined with Ryuu, Shima and Sota. Anyone else in the house could overhear us talking about this and might think we were conspiring against them.
Sota motioned for me to scoot over. He stood with his hands on the knot of his belt and untied it, removing the top kimono layer. He stood bare-chested, in the shadows.
While it was clear his intention was to join us on the futons, I hesitated. Shima might have slept with oxen most of his life, but I had slept alone. I wondered if even that would change in the future.
I moved on the bed to give him room. I nudged Ryuu and he turned over. He relaxed on his side, his back to me.
Sota slipped into the bed. I couldn’t talk about the letter, but now that I was awake, I still wanted to talk to Sota. I wanted him to know that I appreciated him helping me, even if I couldn’t say those words.
“How did you become an escort?” I asked. “And why? How do you know so much about what we’ll be doing?”
“I want to answer you honestly, but tha
t is difficult without betraying the emperor.”
I stilled my tongue. Pressing him further would be asking him to break an oath to the emperor. “Answer how you deem appropriate,” I said. Like Mrs. Satsu, he knew a lot—I assumed because he had once been inside the Immortal City. He might have been a servant of some sort, like her. Perhaps that was how they knew each other. “And do you stay with Mrs. Satsu if I am not selected?”
He resituated the pillows so I had two and he had one. “If you aren’t selected, I won’t be needed here anymore. So I’ll be out on the street, the same as you.”
The tone and depths of the muscles in his chest told me he had worked hard and eaten well, unlike Shima, who might be strong but was still thin. The tan of his skin didn’t stop until his beltline, and it surprised me to know he went bare-chested in the sun enough to tan evenly.
“And you’re risking your opportunity on me?” I asked. “Aren’t you afraid I might not be chosen for anything? Don’t you have a choice about who you work with?”
He stretched in the bed, with those bright blue eyes seeming to glow in the candlelight as he looked at me.
“Mrs. Satsu came to find me right when the registration was about to be announced. She had already gotten word about it and knew a few families who had very special lineage and stood a good chance of being selected. However, she said from the start there was a certain...I don’t know, a uniqueness she was looking for that she wasn’t finding in any of them. She wanted to go out and find it.
“When Mrs. Satsu left for your village and had me follow her, she didn’t tell me her criteria,” he said. “She just knew what she wanted and went out looking for it. We got to your village, and she left me waiting. Later, she told me to meet with my new student in the house on the hill among the trees. I had no idea what I was in for, but I trusted her.” He paused and then brought his hand to my face.
I stilled, heart beating, waiting for him to tell me he was disappointed at the dirty rat she had chosen.
He tugged a tiny lock of hair away from my eyes, brushing it back with the rest of my hair. “She didn’t tell me about your almond-shaped eyes, or your delicate pink lips, or the way you could make someone tremble with a single look.”
