by Jaida Jones
I reminded myself of sleeping on dirt, of catching my own rabbits to eat; I reminded myself of the way my brother treated the men and women of the house—as though they weren’t even there.
I was concentrating so hard on what it meant to be small that I forgot, it would seem, what it meant to listen.
“I said, move it along” one of the common guards repeated to me, kicking dust toward my feet. Beside me, Kouje stiffened, but I murmured the usual apologies in time-honored form before I scuffled in the right direction.
We were just at the door, where the wall opened up into a white-pebbled courtyard. There were the barracks where the border guards slept in rotation, the low walkways between humble buildings; and there, just beyond, were green fields with tall grasses, stirred by the wind. The low roofs were thatched, not shingled. Truly, we were in country provinces, as far from the capital as my imagination had taken me. We were in the commander of the Guard’s territory: a man so unimportant that I’d never been required to learn his name. Country nobles and those from the capital rarely saw eye to eye, and had even less reason to. It wasn’t as if we ever sat down to share our meals.
That was for the best. No man there would recognize me.
I knew the commander first by his shoes: fine, strong boots, not as muddy as the common guards’ were, and he walked with a presence of bearing that revealed his status. I chanced a look no higher than his knees as he walked past us.
“Two,” he said, addressing himself to Kouje, “is a very unlucky number these days.”
“So I’ve heard,” Kouje replied, adopting a country accent. Later, I would have to ask him whether or not it was from his own hometown, or something he’d conjured on the spot. “I’ve spent time enough already just trying to get back to my sister. She’s just had a boy, you know.”
“My congratulations on your honor,” the commander said.
“My thanks on your congratulations,” Kouje replied.
He was being careful, addressing the commander with the strictest courtesy available. It was a mystery to me how he’d slipped into the role so easily, until I realized that Kouje, being a better servant than I, had mastered both the art of being small as well as the art of listening. He was echoing everything he’d heard, every conversation that had taken place before him as though he were nothing more than a mirror. He’d learned from them, well enough to play at being a noble himself.
I had to prevent my face from showing surprise when I realized that Kouje was everything my brother feared most in his servants. He was too clever, almost, and I was glad he’d come with me before anyone in the capital had had reason to discover his intelligence.
I stared at the commander’s boots instead, afraid to be caught observing anything higher. He moved back and forth between us like a hunting dog deciding upon its prey; but, at the very least, he hadn’t yet addressed me at all. If he continued to glance over me—like my brother glanced over his servants—then we’d be safe.
“So you are headed to Honganje,” the Commander went on, “in order to visit your sister’s newborn son?”
“Traveling since the war ended,” Kouje replied stiffly, clearing his throat.
“Not a ruffian, I hope,” the commander said.
“Just can’t seem to settle down, that’s all,” Kouje said.
“You traveled all this way alone?”
“I had some companions with me. Men I met in the war.”
“And your companions?”
I could hear a smile creep into Kouje’s voice. “Lost them to the bright lights of the capital, I’m sorry to say. Just couldn’t drag them away from the pleasure quarters. But me? I couldn’t settle down in a place like that, with all the women looking at me behind my back like I’m some kind of bear. I need more space than those rooms allow.”
“Hm,” the commander said. “You’ll forgive me for all the questions, my lord. We must take as many precautions as we may.”
“I understand your duty as well as I understand my own,” Kouje replied.
The commander cleared his throat, and I saw him gesture with a willow branch toward two of the guards—whose feet were waiting, boots caked with dust, just behind him.
“Pardon our interference,” the commander said. “It will only be a moment, but our duty demands that we search your belongings.”
“I understand completely,” Kouje replied.
But he couldn’t, I thought desperately. My clothes were in there—the fine silk robes I’d worn the night Iseul meant to kill me. Those were no country lord’s effects, nor were they a courtesan’s parting gift. They were too fine for that. The moment the guards saw them we would be suspect. Had Kouje forgotten them, or had he simply seen no way to prevent the search without appearing yet more suspicious?
If only I could have seen his face. His eyes would have told me everything. But, without that, I knew I had to warn him.
We were close enough that I managed, with my free hand, to grab at his sleeve.
The guards, just at our horse, stood still.
“Your manservant is overly familiar,” the commander said. “What a curious choice for a simple lord such as yourself.” He advanced upon me, lifting the willow branch as command. “Show me your face, man,” he ordered.
“No need,” Kouje said, a terrifying steel in his voice. “He has shown such disrespect before, and I have always taken care of it.”
“Perhaps not well enough,” the commander said. “Show me your face.”
Kouje moved more quickly than I knew he could, as quickly as the fabled warriors of old lore. With a sharp cry—to anyone but me, it would have seemed a noise of rebuke, but all that I heard was pain—he’d grabbed the commander’s willow branch in one hand.
And then he was beating me with it.
The first lash was too much of a shock to hurt. I registered no pain at all, but the second was fierce enough to send me to the ground. I fell, and the dust clouded up around me as Kouje brought the willow branch down upon me like a lash. Like, indeed, a master beating his servant.
I brought my arms up to shield my face, though I noticed too late that he was not aiming there, but for my forearms and shoulders—where, perhaps, I might not be too badly injured. Pebbles dug into my legs and I curled in around myself, wondering whether or not Kouje had taken leave of his senses entirely, if the madness of our escape had at last driven him mad.
Surely he had a reason.
The willow branch sliced into the rough cloth at my elbow and tore it. Blood had been drawn, and I was not the only one to know it.
“That should be sufficient,” Kouje said, hoarse and breathless.
“You have been too cruel,” the commander replied. There was some rebuke in his voice.
“Servants must learn their place,” Kouje countered, and kicked at me. “Get up.”
“Still…” the commander said, but trailed off. No man dared to tell another how to treat those under him. It was up to his discretion, and interference was an insult.
I stumbled to my feet, the bags I carried heavy, my mind swirling with the dust. Of course, I realized in a sudden burst of misery and relief, Kouje had distracted them from their purpose. They wouldn’t think to look in our bags. What servant would ever beat his master so? What loyal subject would ever strike his prince?
We were of no more interest to them. We were irrelevant to their duty.
But Kouje, I knew, would never forgive himself.
The guards by our horses stepped away at a gesture from the commander, and I tried to feel grateful, not muzzy with pain and the gentle wet dripping of blood into my sleeve. I thought of rocks, and mountains, and the forbidding, solid posture of the men who played heroes in the theatre and I held my place. I didn’t sway, or stumble. If I had done that, then surely everything would have been lost. As it stood, I was unsure and afraid of what was holding Kouje together.
I knew that it would be terrible when whatever he was clinging to crumbled at last.
&n
bsp; “My blessings on your nephew,” said the commander, which meant we could go. His voice was less cordial than it had been before, as though he’d decided that Kouje was not a man he’d like to know after all.
The injustice of it rose thick in my throat like the dust, so that I had to swallow around my unhappiness. I held silent, and dropped my gaze so that I could not even see the commander’s boots.
“My thanks for your courtesy,” Kouje said, and handed back the commander’s willow branch.
If the gesture was a little too swift and abrupt, it could be taken as apology for the commander’s displeasure. The bow that came next could be taken for the same, but I knew that it was only so that Kouje could take shelter in a brief moment of hiding his face.
I took the horse’s reins once again, my movements perfunctory, as though I were a puppet putting on a show of humanity.
Kouje walked ahead of me. He did not look back even as we passed out of the courtyard and into Honganje prefecture.
CHAPTER TWELVE
KOUJE
It was quiet on the plains. To our left were the humble rice paddies of country farmers, and as the sun set it cast light across the murky water, so that it burned silver. To our right, in the far distance, were the Cobalt Mountains, over which the dragons flew during the war. Their peaks disappeared into the clouds, and if I tried to follow them, my eyes burned with the fading sunlight.
“I understand why you did it,” Mamoru had explained, many hours ago, after I’d helped him to mount the horse. My hand had rested upon his forearm, where that very same hand had drawn blood. I had nothing to wrap the wound with.
Those were the last words he’d spoken. I’d offered none at all.
When we stopped for the night, and there was no more promise of putting that moment yet farther behind us—then I could answer for what I’d done, confront it, stand like the fabled warrior protecting his lord on the bridge with my weapon at the ready.
That story had been my father’s favorite. It recounted the tale of the loyal retainer, the last barrier between his lord and their enemies, fighting off a garrison of men on his own while his lord prepared means for suicide high in the castle keep. They died together, my father said, and they were honor itself. But those men came from a time long before ours, a time when honor ran thicker than blood, and bound each man to another—a hierarchy, itself more violent than magic. It was a principle upon which our entire world was built and I had defamed it with one simple stroke, with a weapon as simple and as beautiful as a willow branch.
Put that in your play, Goro, I thought; but even that was too outlandish, and no audience would ever believe it. It had been, in short, the perfect ruse—so perfect that they had not bothered to check our bags, in which Mamoru’s silk robe lay coiled like a snake to destroy the two of us.
Mamoru knew why I had done it.
If he knew that much, then he knew what it meant for both of us that I had raised my hand against him. We did not speak the next day, nor the day after that, but rode on toward our goal as though we were strangers. In some ways, we surely were. I could no longer think of us as a prince and his retainer, since I had surely destroyed those skins for us.
I slept poorly, when I slept at all, and the bandage on my lord’s arm was a constant reminder of what ill I’d done alongside the good.
Never before; never again. I’d done it for him, hadn’t I, and not for myself? The answer would never be sufficient. Another day passed us by like a dream, my lord trapped by my very silence.
It was another day before he spoke again. He was ever braver than I, in this respect.
“Kouje,” Mamoru said, from somewhere far and high above me. He was riding the horse as I walked beside him, but the distance had grown with each step so insurmountable that it was a miracle I could even hear him.
I said nothing.
For a time after that he was quiet, and I was a coward and grateful for the quiet, until he spoke again, that time with more vigor. “We ought to stop soon. I hear the sound of a river.”
The horse whinnied, a steadfast though foreign mount, and gazed at me as though he meant to condemn me, too. I’d driven them both too hard, but the smaller injustices withered when placed next to the only one that mattered.
“Come,” I whispered to the horse, and led him toward the water to drink.
Mamoru dismounted without my help and fell to making camp. By then, the shadows were too deep to see his face and I sat against a log to consider what came next. I would take him to Honganje, then I would lock myself away like that lord in the keep. At dawn, I would do the honorable thing, with Mamoru safe and my service fulfilled.
My arm should rot away as we walked for what it had done.
I should wake in the morning to discover it had turned to snakes, writhing beside me.
The flesh should turn the color of ash and my fingers would be burned into the soil first, followed by the palm and the wrist, until nothing was left of the offending limb.
No apology was true enough, no action clear. I did not watch my lord as he readied himself and went to sleep, and I sat with my back against the log until I, too, drifted off, where dreams rose up to cover me with thorns.
I woke to the sound of my lord shouting.
At last, they’d caught us, I thought, despite all that we’d both sacrificed. I fumbled for something to use as a weapon, and cursed myself for thinking all was safe enough to rest. With a stick in hand—my new weapon, it seemed—and the bark rough against my palm, I raised my arm and prepared to attack the enemy.
But not even the sound of footfalls greeted me, and no shadows of soldiers moved across the moonlit darkness.
We were alone, and my lord was crying out in his sleep.
I dropped the branch and moved to his side. It had been many years since last Mamoru had experienced a nightmare. When he’d been a boy, I’d slipped into bed beside him and rocked him back to sleep, feeling his feverish brow and calling for the servants when he was peaceful at last. They brought him cold water and the usual medicines, teas, and powders, none of which seemed to make one whit of difference. We had no such assistance with us, but when I pressed my hand against his brow, I felt that it was fiercely hot.
“Mamoru,” I whispered, all else forgotten. “Mamoru, wake up!”
He writhed—much like a snake himself—and struck out at my face. His nails caught against my skin and tore at it, and I was too stunned by the blow to say anything when his eyes opened, and fixed upon me in the night.
A fever, at this time of year?
Perhaps we had gone too far too quickly. Or, with his constitution, so many nights spent blanketed by the evening chill and the morning dew had at last taken its toll.
Or I had beaten him too hard, a guilty voice added, twisting its miserable fingers deep inside my belly, the blade of a knife carved solely for suicide.
Mamoru whimpered, his arm falling limp against my shoulder, and I felt something still within me. I had no time to be feeling guilty when my lord was in need of me.
“Mamoru,” I said again, now that his eyes were open. I passed my hand in front of his face, and his eyes did not follow the movement. “Mamoru, please.”
He gasped, as though breathing had become difficult for him, and his hand clenched tight, grasping at my shirt against the advent of some unseen enemy.
“No,” he moaned, low dread tainting his voice. “Don’t… It isn’t…”
In his illnesses as a child, the fever had sometimes given my lord deliriums, so that for a period of time he was entirely lost to me. There, he wandered in some land of his fevered brain’s devising where I could not follow, and therefore could not protect him.
“I am here,” I said, praying that it wasn’t me his fever had conjured, someone meant to protect him now turned against him. “It’s all right. You should have some… water.”
There was a great river that stood between our destination and us. We would have to cross it in order to reach my sis
ter’s house, and I’d meant to tackle that obstacle when we came to it later, but now I thought that perhaps it would serve us best to try and reach it that night. Without the powders, teas, and medicines available at the palace, I was rather at a loss as to how to bring Mamoru’s fever down. With his constitution, there was no telling what lasting damage might be done to his body if he remained so hot. He burned where I touched him, through the rough homespun cloth, torn here and there.
I dared to touch his arm, where the blood had dried against the fabric, as though by covering the wound I could heal it.
“Kouje,” he gasped, and I felt my heart leap like a startled animal.
“My lord,” I murmured, too close for anyone else, even the birds, to hear. “I think we should try to get to the river.”
“The trees are moving,” he moaned, gazing at me without seeing me.
“That’s just the wind,” I said, and took him in my arms to stand us both up.
My lord was terribly thin, though he hadn’t once complained about the sparse meals we’d grown accustomed to on the road. Carrying him was like holding a bundle of sticks, already set to blazing with the illness in his blood. How long had it been since Mamoru had last been taken with fever? I couldn’t remember. The physicians had all said he’d grown out of it—once he weathered his thirteenth winter, he’d long since outlived their predictions—and indeed he’d fought capably enough in the mountain campaigns without ever falling ill.
It was enough to make me wonder—as I had never allowed myself to before—whether or not my lord’s illnesses had been entirely organic. If Iseul was capable of calling him traitor, who knew at what point he had begun to feel animosity for his brother?
