Find Me, page 22
“I shall see her face. I shall name her, and I shall hold her in my arms. I will do whatever it takes, Ayame. I hope you won’t judge me too harshly and will still care for me when the dust settles. This is war.”
“War is how we met, my lord.” Ayame put her hands around his, now both holding their daughter. “There is nothing you can do to make me think any less of you.” But it was this love that made her petty, so she couldn’t help asking, “Were you with her last night, my lord?”
He laughed in her face, which wasn’t an answer. He clicked his tongue, the smile still on his face. “If it lives, it dies, and that goes for both the Ryu bastards. In the meantime, don’t dishearten the bujin. They are a superstitious bunch. All right?”
Ayame nodded.
“And don’t ask your lord silly questions.” His attitude had changed much. Perhaps it was the news of the Ryu that made him haughty, shifted him into a mindset that he must be in to win. “I’m not used to answering a woman who isn’t my mother. But no, I haven’t touched the Goho girl.” With that, he got up. “Eat something, then get Eclipse to help you pack. Don’t exert yourself. But you are about to accompany your lord to battle. Bring me good fortune, Lady Ayame of Ishii.”
He kissed her crown and held her for a moment, then it passed, and he marched away with his hand on his hilt.
twenty-four
Light and Dark
The first winter Ayame was in the floating world, she’d sheltered in an abandoned fishing village. Many of the huts burned and collapsed, war had run through it and the inhabitants had either fled or were slaughtered. She’d made do foraging during the short days and burning debris of the huts to keep the fire going during the long nights. Because Immortal Court had eternal spring, such a miserable turn in the climate had been new to her. Although she nearly died many times, a memory of beauty remained with her from those days of solitude.
A strip of sand, a color of itself, separated the heaving blue ocean from the white cloaked earth where the waves broke, constantly washing the snow away. In the coldest of winter, in between the frozen earth and the water like the blue of ice, a reminder of summer lived, a beach like blooming kerria.
That was the sight now. Only except for the snow, there were bodies. She couldn’t have imagined the dead could become physical obstructions, but that was what they were, piled like mounds of earth. Not because someone had taken the time to stack them, but simply by virtue of having died there, holding the line—the Ryu line.
The imperial ships were bunched up in the shallows and battling the waves pushing them toward the shore. The smaller kaizoku ships surrounded them, much like a pack of wolves might an ox, and endlessly harassed them with volleys of arrows. The imperial ships were running aground, trying to avoid the pirates, and those who tried ramming through the barricade found themselves eaten by the wolves with hacking swords. Ayame didn’t imagine the kaizoku cared about mainland politics, but they saw hundreds of free ships for the taking, which was what they were doing, stealing the imperial fleet.
Up on the hill, with the vantage point Ayame had, she could see the battle unfolding and the formation moving like pieces on a board. Kyuzo-dono was in his red armor, the metal scales clanking as he paced with the Ishii war fan clasped behind his back. He signaled with it and his orders were being carried through the bellow of copper mouthed conch shells.
The Ishii, distinguishable by their red banner, were a speck in the sea of black—Goho. Their crest was a silver coin on a black banner. It was explained to Ayame, very smugly by Lady Teishi, that the first trade system of Nara was established by the Goho, and they had their separate currency from the Ryu.
Lady Teishi sat inside the marquee with Lord Taiko, drinking wine with the men. It was the same white marquee she’d seen back at their base, a triangular roof being held up by red wooden poles—no side flaps. The Goho lords and generals fit snugly under it, wine already flowing, pleased with the current of the battle.
Ayame was in the Ishii marquee. Lord Kyuzo hadn’t lugged around the one he’d been sleeping in a day ago, and they were using the one lent by the Goho, equally small like a parasol. Urchin was with her, humming whilst feeding pigeons in a bamboo crate. They were side by side with the Goho marquee, close enough for Ayame to see Lady Teishi following Kyuzo-dono with her gaze. The princess smiled the entire time. Despite the armor and the swords, Ayame hadn’t seen the girl draw once, and thought the whole thing was a costume to her.
A messenger with a plain red banner strapped to his back on a pole came sprinting to Lord Kyuzo. Taking a single knee while he panted, he held out a folded letter to his lord with a bow. Messengers ran all about the battlefield, and they were marked differently so the bujin knew to protect them.
“Any news from your vassals, Kyuzo-dono? Or have they all deserted?” one of the Taiko lords asked, a man who’d attempted and failed at a beard that looked like tattered strings draped from his chin.
The others laughed.
Kyuzo-dono smiled. His helmet with the grand golden antlers and war mask with a snarling mouth and a white mustache was on the short table by Ayame. Lord Kyuzo cupped his mouth to speak to his messenger. The man bowed, then ran off.
He raised his war fan, and the Ishii caller blew the conch shell. Each clan had their own unique call, a complex pattern of instructions the bujin were expected to know.
Battle was a loud affair, even from the hill and even after the Ryu weapons had stopped firing. A melee, which was what it had devolved into after the initial exchange of long range weapons, sounded like a long, horrid yell.
Jester rode in, nearly into the marquee, before jumping off his horse and yanking on the rope of his helmet. Heaving, grimacing, he tossed his helmet, got a dipper of water from the wooden bucket in the corner and splashed his face with it.
“Damn hot,” he said, letting pieces of his armor fall onto the grass as he stripped them off.
“How is it down there?” Ayame asked, pouring him tea as he came and collapsed by her.
“Deafening, everyone is trying to kill you and you can’t see shit,” Jester said, guzzling a bottle of wine instead of the offered tea.
Jester in his armor tunic, the white cotton padding bujin wore under their armor, didn’t have a sash around his waist, but he picked up his sword and laid it across his knees. Closing his eyes, he brought his breathing to an even and slow rhythm.
“Do you know how Goodnight is always bragging?” he asked, his eyes closed.
“Yeah?” Ayame asked.
“He better live it.”
Ayame’s gaze dropped to his grip tightening around his hilt, his breathing slowing still.
Outside the marquee, Lord Kyuzo had been spinning his war fan playfully. Then the black side went up, not high enough for the callers to respond to but just barely.
The Taiko caller had been on the other side of their marquee, too vested in his lord’s conversation and leaning into their tent with a grin on his face—callers and bannermen were the highest ranking bujin. They were often casual with their lord like so. Their message runner was some distance from the marquee, his banner completely yellow. He was bending and twisting, stretching his legs out. He fell, it looked like, face forward.
An arrow punched into the red pole of the Goho marquee, its black feathers vibrating from the force. It appeared Goodnight had missed, but the caller collapsed, blood spraying from his neck—it had gone straight through him, tail and all.
Lord Taiko, right through the forehead. He hadn’t even gotten up. All three kills had taken less than a blink, and just now, as the old lord was falling back, their bujin reacted—one flipping the table, another pushing Lady Teishi down, and others rising, their blades hissing out of their sheaths.
There had been about twenty bujin, Lord Taiko’s personal guards around the marquee on top of the vassals inside it. Arrows had their numbers one after the other, and by the time they sprinted the ten yards to Lord Kyuzo, Jester intercepted them. That one always claimed he fought better without armor weighing him down.
Dance of the blades, whistle of the arrows, the Goho bujin collapsed all at once as if someone had cut the strings of a puppet.
Ayame yelped when blood spurted from the Goho caller. She grabbed her lord’s helmet and got up. The fight was over by the time she took the three steps out of the marquee. Kyuzo-dono flicked blood off his sword and Ayame stepped into the spray path.
“You have a habit of approaching men who have their blade drawn.” Kyuzo-dono frowned. “Don’t do that. Go back into the marquee. Strap on Jester’s cuirass.”
Feeling scolded for trying to help, Ayame returned to the marquee but didn’t suppose Jester’s armor would fit her largeness and didn’t try.
Lady Teishi had survived. Whimpering, she was scooting back on the grass painted in the blood and gore of her men. Kyuzo-dono only flicked her a look, then turned his back to her. Not to look away, it was just that his attention was on the battlefield.
Although the girl had a blade at her waist, she held up her hand, pleading as Jester strode to her.
“No,” she said, looking up.
“You don’t demand Ishii heads and you don’t ask my lord to kill his wife, neither he liked very much, by the way.” Jester had a softness in his voice.
“I’m sorry,” Lady Teishi whimpered. She was truly young, a child still. “I won’t do it again. We’re allies, Kyuzo-dono! You need me!”
He didn’t care. He didn’t even look back.
“Close your eyes,” Jester said.
“No!”
“Suit yourself.”
The hand she shielded herself with and her head slipped off at once. The hand remained where it fell, and the head rolled down the hill. Jester flicked the blood off his blade, then wiped it on the inside of his elbow before sheathing it.
Then he went to the Goho marquee, put on Lord Taiko’s helmet, and sat there drinking their wine, surrounded by their dead as the Ishii caller blew the shell.
The stone teacup on the wooden table rattled, gliding across, then toppling over. A drum beat she’d felt at Enju, the strumming hooves of a cavalry, quaked the earth. Ayame got up and went to stand beside her lord. She was at his left and he let go of his hilt to place his hand on her belly, his hand bloody.
“What is she doing?” he asked.
“Sleeping, I suppose,” she said. “She sleeps through much of the day and rumbles about at night.”
“Mmm,” he said.
The Ishii didn’t charge. They advanced slowly as their lines shot volley after volley, a hail of arrows at the shore of death where the Ryu and the Goho were locked in a fray. With their backs to the ocean, they had nowhere to retreat, and it took the Goho far too long to realize the Ishii were shooting at them. No command, no war shells, their forces splintered.
Then came the charge that encircled and herded them like sheep into the ocean, into the mouth of the pirates floating on rafts. The water turned red, and the beach was littered with the dead, Ishii horses trampling them whilst the riders mowed down those attempting to flee.
“Two hundred and fifty imperial ships, I suppose that’s payment enough for your father?” Kyuzo-dono said.
Turning, Ayame realized Urchin had come up behind her.
“And protection from imperial harassment. The same deal my lord had so kindly extended to the Inaba,” Urchin said.
“My deal with the Inaba has expired. The son they sent me was a traitor. Their waters are for the taking, the same as their islands.”
“Father shall be pleased.” Urchin tipped his head up at the sky. “Fortune rains upon us today. May it carry us to Sunlit City.”
After Urchin left, Ayame asked, “Why?” about the carnage on the beach. The whole site had turned black with the shinigami crawling like ants.
“Why, what?” Kyuzo-dono asked.
“Why do this? Where the Goho not… friends?”
“I have no friends, Ayame, only subjects and enemies,” as he said, his attention shifted to a messenger running up the hill. He didn’t wait for the man to arrive and shouted, “Do they have Locks?”
“Yes, my lord!”
“Fetch my helmet, Ayame. If you say he’s the same as Hissing Blade, let’s go find out what makes him tick.”
Kyuzo-dono mounted his black stallion with red tassels, a showy creature who liked to toss his head and display his mane, and waited for a bujin to bring Ayame a horse. She side-saddled and held onto her belly like a basket. Crane led her horse down the hill, the reins tightly wrapped in his hand. Her lord rode ahead but didn’t leave her behind and they proceeded at the pace of a walking man.
Bodies were strewn all down the hill and across the shore as if the earth was made of corpses. Her horse walked on the dead, while some twitched at the pressure. It smelled like slaughter, like raw meat.
She kept her gaze on her lord, his armor red as blood. Just then, what he did dawned on her. He was never trapped with the Goho, he manipulated them. He used the animosity between the Ryu and the Goho to draw the imperial army to the south. He got in Lord Taiko’s head through his daughter and had him retreat to the end of Nara, abandoning his people and provinces, leaving hundreds of thousands of lives to suffer the cruelty of the Ryu. It was always meant to distract the imperial army, have their supply lines overextend, their morale deplete, and in the end trap them at the butt of the empire with the pirates to their backs. He must’ve known the Ryu wouldn’t go through the mountains and would choose to sail around instead. In the meantime, he meant to have the Satsuma and the Ishii sack Sunlit City.
Two things happened that he didn’t expect. One, the Ishii followed him to the south. Two, his force split and turned around, causing the Ryu to rush home to defend it. He didn’t miss a beat using it to his advantage, though. Now that his own were here, he couldn’t help eliminating the Goho who would inevitably challenge Sora’s claim to the throne.
A young girl had been infatuated with him, and he’d known that well before he came here. Naomi hadn’t been wrong that if you let him use you, he did. There were two sides to Lord Kyuzo. One played with his grandchildren, indulged bad mouthed bujin, and was revered by the peasants for his kindness and generosity. But when he put on his war mask, a side of him came out that turned the ocean red.
Had Ayame let him go when he wanted to go to Hissing Blade, hundreds of thousands of people wouldn’t have died—just him. Yet, that wasn’t the worst of it. This was: she loved him still. She saw the entirety of him, the dark and the light, the capacity for kindness but the propensity for indifference and cruelty. To Kyuzo-dono, only his own mattered, but she’d always known that, hadn’t she? How many thousands of Shimura had he killed over the loss of a handful of bujin? He didn’t care that Kagemori was in ruins because it wasn’t Yukiyama.
Understanding all this, she loved him still. Not despite, but just as he was. Perhaps she was broken because his behavior hadn’t appalled or disgusted her. Or perhaps this was just Nara.
“Kyuzo-dono?” she called.
Twisting in his saddle, he looked at her. And yeah, she still wanted him. As a red furred friend would say, she was a fool.
The bujin stood in a circle and watched Locks swing wildly to keep them back. At first, Ayame wasn’t so sure it was the prince because of the full armor, but when Jester tried approaching him and the prince split the bujin’s blade in half, Kyuzo-dono had him lassoed and dragged behind a galloping horse through the death field of blood and shit. The prince lost his sword then, and as it appeared, immortal armor didn’t protect one from being tied down and stripped. When the helmet came off, it was Prince Locks, his golden hair clumped in chunks with mud.
Kneeling among standing bujin the prince of Nara begged, holding out his open hands. The smugness had left his face. “Take me for ransom. The emperor will pay any price. If it’s pardon you want, Kyuzo, my brother will grant it. I swear it.”
Ayame wanted to know how he’d returned and ask him about the Ryu’s connection to Kagami. But before she could approach her lord to speak, he said, “I don’t need any pardon but from the deities. I’ll send him your head instead.”
“That’s a mistake, Kyuzo. He will destroy you.”
“If threats were horses, even beggars would ride against me. Execute him.”
“Kyuzo!” Locks screamed, red in the face. The rest of the words were spoken into the mud as Crane kicked him in the face.
That was that. Ayame couldn’t contradict her lord and she wouldn’t beg for Locks’s life.
The execution of the prince became a matter of resources. The Ishii didn’t have a giant pot to boil him alive in. They didn’t want to use their oil to scald him. Hanging and decapitating, Lord Kyuzo deemed were too merciful, and crucifixion would take too long. No one wanted to wait. So, when Tiger suggested waist-cutting, Lord Kyuzo accepted.
Ayame wasn’t there for the gore, and she looked away as Tiger swung. She would have thought the death be immediate. Perhaps as not as swift as beheading, but how long could a halved man live?
She walked away. But everywhere she looked, there was death. A shinigami opened its mouth, and a hand came out from inside to grab a man’s soul from its dying body. Then, it occurred to her that she wanted to see what would happen to Locks. She rushed back and shoved her way through the circle of bujin.
Locks, a torso only, was flopping on the mud—alive. Entrails and his spine dragging behind him like strings, he was attempting to crawl, his mouth flapping with a horrid expression on his face.
Kyuzo-dono was looking at it. His gaze flicked to Ayame, asking her a question she didn’t know the answer to. What was happening? Why wasn’t he dying? He was suffering, that was plain.
“Perhaps it’s true that the Ryu are demons,” Kyuzo-dono said. “Burn it. That will purify it.” He turned away. It was too much, even for him.
But Ayame had to see. She had to know.
When a body could no longer sustain physical life, the soul uncoupled from it. A separation of the soul was mortal death. Should a shinigami not claim the soul, he might roam around, go home not realizing he’d died, but it didn’t do this—the prince’s soul wasn’t parting.
