Find Me, page 12
“Prince Hissing Blade summons you,” one said, then without giving her the chance to comply, he grabbed her, yanked her to her feet, then shoved her forward.
Outside the palace, snow blanketed the stone-paved courtyard. The night was moonless but not dark as the city beyond the gate glowed with thousands of lanterns.
Below the steps, Lord Kyuzo stood with two reins in his hand—one horse was his own and the other was Wraith’s gelding. All bujin horses were gelded except for Kyuzo-dono’s black stallion. The sword at his hip was the one Ayame gave him, the death god’s blade. A line of Ryu soldiers stood between Ayame and her lord as Hissing Blade made her stand on the stone stairs with him. If dawn was coming, it was far away.
The lord wiped his eyes because snowflakes were landing on his lashes. He had blood on his hand, and he smeared it on his face when he did that. A moment of truth as Lord Kyuzo waited, not taking his gaze off the prince. His breath steamed.
“You gave me your word,” Kyuzo-dono said, his gaze shifting to Ayame. His eyes were wide and darkened with fear.
“So I did.” Hissing Blade clasped his hands at the back, a self-satisfied smile on his lips as his red eyes gleamed. “I’ve asked Sora’s head to be brought to me. Would you like to take it with you? Give him a burial, perhaps?”
“I can’t wait. They’re looking for me.” Desperation seeped out through the voice he tried to keep even.
“Very well, then. I shall put it on a pike.”
“Do as you please.” He was so nervous that he bit his lower lip.
“Perhaps you should bow to your new emperor.” Hissing Blade toyed.
Kyuzo-dono didn’t hesitate. He dropped to his knees and touched his forehead to the ground. “Long live your Imperial Majesty Hissing Blade of Ryu.”
Satisfied, Hissing Blade turned. “Five days, Kyuzo, and either you come to me or I’m coming for you.”
Oh, it would be much shorter than that when he discovered Locks missing. Ayame jittered with worry as the moment stretched, but finally, the prince said, “Let her go.”
She sprinted down the stairs into his arms. But there was no time for that.
“Come on.” He boosted her up onto Wraith’s saddle.
As he mounted, he took her reins, and just like that they were running with the entire empire on their backs.
thirteen
Don’t Say That
The city was in chaos. The sentry riding through alleys whipped people out of the way. Gongs and war shells reverberated from the palace. Fire had broken out in several districts, glowing orange in the night, and a man pulling a cart ducked as Lord Kyuzo’s mount jumped over it, Wraith’s gelding on its heels. It was used to following Lord Kyuzo’s horse and didn’t need to be persuaded to haul after it.
‘Ayame, don’t lose me,’ he’d said and let go of her reins. His sword hand was on his tachi, the longer and more curved blade bujin used from horseback. They were coming upon the red bridge, and the air tasted of the salt water of the moat.
Perhaps afraid of riots and looting, the vendors pulling carts crowded the city gates and panicked people pushed against the lines of Ryu barring their way from crossing the bridge.
“Get back!” one yelled, beating a man with a club. The haunting bark of Ryu weapons firing echoed throughout the city.
Lord Kyuzo twisted on his saddle, saw she was right behind him, then drew his blade. He mowed right through the Ryu line, blood spraying and screaming men darting. Wraith’s horse trampled over those who fell, peasant and sentry alike. Had Ayame pulled the reins, she would have been swallowed by the crowd that rushed after Kyuzo-dono—not soldiers, just fleeing civilians. The emperor was dead, and the last time there was an attempt on his life, the city had bled.
The arquebuses fired after them. A bad place to be, a long straight bridge and many fell to the awful sounds, their heads or chests bursting red. A woman running with a child tripped in front of Ayame and she ran her horse into the side railing trying to avoid her. She didn’t know if she’d succeeded and was afraid to look back. Her eyes were forward, on her lord, only hoping the rest of it would disappear if she just ignored them hard enough.
Maybe this was a long, horrible, stupid dream, and she was about to wake in Yukiyama with Misaki’s children running through the halls.
They rode through the night and most of the day, the horses’ breath steaming and their muscles quivering. Heavy snow and high winds made it harder for anyone to track them, but made the roads trying as well.
Ayame saw Lord Kyuzo stopped up ahead and rode up to him. He was crooked in his saddle and breathing rapidly.
“I can’t see that well,” he said, turning to her. His long hair was frozen in strands. “Can you find us a shelter? We should be within miles of a fishing village. It may be covered in snow. I can’t tell.” Dilated pupils made his eyes darker, and Ayame thought he might pass out.
“Are you injured, my lord?”
Fresh blood ran down his hand and dripped on the snow.
“I’m fine. It’s just my sight…”
Yet he wasn’t wrong about where they were. Less than an hour later, Ayame saw tiny fishing boats moored to a pier along the cold grey ocean. A group of wooden huts with thatched roofs were bunched together like a flock of brown birds on the white earth. Ayame went to the most downtrodden one at the edge of the group, an outcast perhaps, and banged on the shutters closed for the blizzard.
Lord Kyuzo had saddled Ayame’s horse with her bag, as well as Master Grey’s, and she robbed her dead master’s purse to brandish some coins to the fisherman in straw boots.
“My home is too little for guests,” he explained, his eyes darting to Lord Kyuzo behind her. He was mounted and leaned forward, lying on the horse’s neck.
“How about your barn, sir? We’ll stay with our horses.” Trouble was that horses meant wealth, and to him, wealth meant trouble.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“My husband and I,” she said because she was in the fancy green robe, not her priestess attire, “were visiting Lord Isamu and got lost on our way to the Sunlit City.”
They were on Satsuma territory, and the lord’s name made the fisherman bow. Then his helpfulness increased, not only welcoming them into the barn but bringing them mats, pots, and a bucket. The barn had an indoor well, and Ayame thought he used to have animals before some misfortune struck him. It was Nara, and bad luck was how people lived.
She thanked him, paid him for his troubles and asked him to purchase feed for the horses by stealing more from the dead master.
Lord Kyuzo hadn’t said much since they left the city and he all but fell down from his horse when the barn door closed.
“You’re hurt.” She went to him and sat him up against a pillar.
The barn had no stalls, but the horses stayed put where she watered them and promised them feed. The roof had a gaping hole where the snow fell through, but once she started a fire on the packed earth, the space warmed.
She unsaddled the horses and found Master Grey’s magical satchel of everything, including nonsensical rocks and a bag of tools that she unrolled.
“Puff, I need you,” she said. Lord Kyuzo had stopped responding to her and his breathing was wretched and labored.
When she took off her necklace and set it on the bare earth that was the barn’s floor, it turned into a red fox.
“What do you need?” He sniffed around the master’s bag, found a moon cake, and helped himself to it. He’d chosen a physical form.
Ayame lay her lord on a mat and checked his forehead. Drenched in cold sweat, his fever soared. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“Well, you’re not going to learn by gawking at him like this. If he’s injured, you need to find it.”
“Right.”
She untied his sash and opened the layers of the robe.
“It’s not like you have modesty. Perhaps you can hurry.” He came over and sniffed. “Blood loss, a lot of it.” He wasn’t wrong. A side of his garment was soaked red and some of it was frozen solid.
When she was taking his clothes off, amber eyes half opened and soft brows knotted over them. “The Ryu weapon,” he whispered. “It’s lodged in the back, underneath my shoulder blade. Can you get it out?”
His neck was bruised from where Locks strangled him, but that wasn’t all. He had multiple red, black, and blue marks all over him where she imagined the prince beat the hell out of him. It wasn’t from a sword fight, that was for certain, and they’d kept him in the Hall of Reflections for hours whilst Hissing Blade slept.
Rage wasn’t useful, and the tremble unsteadied her hands, so she pressed it down for the moment. She turned him on his side and looked at his back. A small red hole right under the shoulder blade, as he’d said, was the source of the bleeding. She dabbed the wound with a piece of cloth but couldn’t see the wound because of the spewing blood.
She washed her hand and wiped it the best she could, using liquid from a jar that the master used to clean things with. The smell was strong.
Scrunching her face, she looked away as she put her finger inside the wound to feel, making her lord take a sharp inhale. There, a little metal thing, cold to the touch. Ayame pulled her finger out then looked through the master’s utensils—various size knives, but nothing that could pull something out.
“What’s in there?”
“A piece of an arrow… I don’t know. How do I get it out?”
“Do you need forceps?”
“What is that?”
He turned into one, a little scissor looking thing with fine tips at the end. She winced at having to plunge it into him, but it was certainly better than a finger, and it worked by clamping around the metal and pulling it out. Afterward, she put the thing on her palm and looked at it—not an arrow; it was a little metal ball.
Then she sutured the wound, which the master had utensils for, and she knew how to do. It was one of the things women were expected to know in Nara, especially those of warrior caste.
Kyuzo-dono was out cold. She found his dry robes in his saddlebag, but instead of dressing him she left the wound unobstructed and covered him with layers instead. The bruises on his back were a hideous sight, and she didn’t regret killing Locks—not even a bit.
Her lord’s breathing had calmed and Ayame was making soup when the barn door cracked open and curious eyes blinked. The villagers had come to sell her things. Had she been alone, perhaps they would have robbed her—it was Nara—but the men kept eyeing her lord’s blades laid on the ground. One had gone to admire the black stallion but that horse bit and also kicked. She could have told him that, but it was a better lesson to get kicked, make a ruckus, and wake her lord, who naturally grabbed his sword as he rose.
Ayame gave the fishermen their coins for the fish, rice, wine, feed for oxen but would do for horses, and a few other pickled garnishes. A complete whiteout beyond the thin wooden walls, the howling winds rattling the boards; they weren’t going anywhere for a while.
The horses needed the rest, and Ayame hadn’t slept a wink in two nights. After the villagers left, she hoped to get some rest. But Kyuzo-dono sat there, pale as if all his blood had drained, and began cleaning his sword. She knew he did it out of habit. It was a thing that comforted him. Even though his eyes were glazed over and he clearly needed rest, she let him be.
She served a bowl of soup, but he had trouble swallowing and set it aside after a few sips.
“Are you all right?” she asked because he wasn’t talking to her and she didn’t know what else to say.
“I killed my emperor, Ayame. He was seated, unarmed, and having tea, and I cut him down like a dog. Coral Moon drew his blade, but this thing,” he shook the unsigned sword he was oiling, “split his famed katana in half, the prince too. I covered his mouth, waited for him to die so he wouldn’t scream. Then I just walked out because the sentries knew me, and the emperor trusted me.
“That’s what I did.” He reassembled the sword, set it aside and started with the tachi, taking it apart.
That had been a stupid question, and now she had nothing else to say to him.
After a long while, where there were no sounds other than the crying wind and the infrequent nickering of the horses, he spoke again but didn’t look at her. “Can you please wear something else? You’re in Tamaki’s robe and I’m having trouble looking at it because I’ve lost her boy.”
“Of course, my lord. I’m sorry.” She got up to change as he tended to the fire in the hearth.
Ayame changed with her back to him. Where her stomach used to be flat, now there was a small lump, not any larger than a hefty meal, but still, it was noticeably there even as she tried to suck in her gut. She looked at him over her shoulder and he was staring up at the hole in the roof.
“I should fix that,” he muttered.
“What happened to Sora?” She tried to sound casual, slipping into her undergarment.
“I don’t know. I was with the emperor, and we see Ikidomari burning. The patrol tells us there was a scuffle between the Ishii and the Ono and Sora has sustained minor injury. I go there and everyone is dead.” He closed his eyes, letting out a pained exhale.
“Wraith, Isamu’s boy, your master, everyone’s dead…” his voice trailed off. “Sora has no eyes. Hissing Blade has cut them out. That’s the minor injury. My boy tells me Hissing Blade has you, and I go there, that’s all. I left Sora with the Ryu because you mattered more. The boy’s dead, I suppose, like the rest of them.”
Ayame put on her priestess robe and tied her sash. “Do you hate me?” Although she wasn’t facing him, she could feel him looking at her. She held her breath. He took a long time to answer.
“No, I don’t hate anyone else, just myself.”
“Kyuzo-dono…” She turned and marched to him. Dropping to her knees, she tried to take his hand, but he pulled it away.
“Get some rest,” he finally said. “We must leave tomorrow. I’ll take you past Hashimoto territory, but you must find your way home from there on, all right?”
“Where will you be going, my lord?”
“Hundreds of thousands of families live in Ishii territories. I can’t take this trouble home.”
“Where will you be going, my lord?” she repeated.
“To atone for my sins.”
“Kyuzo-dono!” Ayame didn’t care that he didn’t want her to touch him and grabbed from his robe and shook him. “No, I forbid you to give up. What about your bujin? They’ll be masterless vagabonds!”
“That’s what happens when you’re a bujin and your lord dies. This is Nara. Let go of me.”
“And your vassals? Abandon them too? The prince will assign them the most perilous tasks in his wars—”
“He’s the emperor now, and that’s his right.”
“You don’t believe that, Kyuzo-dono.”
“Let go of me!” He pushed her, making her tumble backward. Then he caught her in fright when she almost fell into the fire. “I’m sorry, I just…” He sighed. “Don’t ask anything of me, Ayame. I can’t. I’m done.”
He apologized again, straightening her attire. Then he just sat there staring up at the snow falling through the hollow of the roof. Ayame saw the fire had gone out in him. His eyes were no longer bright, but full of sadness and guilt.
“I’m with child,” she whispered.
It took him a moment to react. He frowned and his gaze swooped down to her. “What?”
“I’m with child, Kyuzo-dono.”
Confusion, uncertainty, disbelief, shock, then utter and complete heartbreak—all of it passed through his face.
“Why say such a thing to me?” his voice faltered. “Don’t you see what I’ve done for you?”
She tried to touch him, and he backed away from her. “Kyuzo-dono?”
“Why say it to me? Why not keep it to yourself and let me go in peace?” He was handling it far worse than she’d hoped and gave him space because his hands trembled. “Why would you say that to me?” He closed his eyes and tears ran down the length of his face.
He tried to gather himself, could not, and yelled, “Whose is it, then? Goodnight?”
“Kyuzo-dono!” Ayame’d had it. She lunged forward, clung onto him while he fought to get away from her. He wouldn’t hit her, and she wouldn’t let go. “You’re not stupid. So, don’t be stupid. The child’s yours, my lord! I haven’t been with anyone else, and you know so!”
Then it was her turn to shove him. “Goodnight? Are you serious? You insult us both! That bujin would lay his life down for you a thousand times. How dare you?”
“It’s that, Ayame! You’re too close to him.”
“Then why not just say so? And I won’t ever speak to him again.”
Rattling curses, he sat for a while with his face in his hands. She could sense him falling deeper into despair, and when he got up, she knew he was going to walk out into the blizzard and never return.
“Kyuzo-dono, I followed you to the in-between. I love you. I would never betray you.”
That made him pause. He didn’t look at her, but wasn’t leaving either.
On her knees, she spoke to his back. “It’s not a dream. You really died. The Shimura killed you, but you remember that, don’t you? Do you recall the great river and the chaos there? I was drowning, and you found me. You gave your coin to another bujin, do you remember? You said he must’ve been there for hundreds of years.”
“The Atsuyasu?” He turned. “How would you know that?”
“Because it happened, and I was there, my lord. What did you tell me when the death gods surrounded us?”
His whole body slackened as his head dropped, shaking slowly. It was a lot for any man to take in at once, mortal or otherwise.
