Takeo's Chronicles, page 173
“Beautiful,” Qadir said, staring with wide eyes from the veranda. “I’ll admit, just this once, I’ve secretly always wondered what it would be like to be human and feel such pain over death. It must truly be unique. Tell me, Takeo, do you crave death now? Do you want to die?”
“Yes,” Takeo eked out, truthfully.
“Then come here, and I will give it to you. Fate no longer protects you.”
Takeo let loose another sob into Gavin’s chest, whispering useless, feeble apologies, unable to process anything beyond basic commands. With some effort, he managed to rise to his feet, though he could hardly stand. His vision blurred and spotted, and he sat down lest he pass out. He swallowed down a sob and fought to stand again. Covered in blood and tears, he stumbled towards Qadir.
“Yes, right there,” the rakshasa said as Takeo came within sword striking distance. “Don’t move. You wouldn’t want me to miss.”
Qadir took the blade from Pleiades’ throat and held it back for a strike. Takeo teetered in place but took as deep a breath as he could and pressed his eyes shut, clearing the tears from them. He even lifted his chin, giving Qadir a better target, and dared hoped that the curse was lifted.
Perhaps this attack will actually kill me. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Qadir swung, and the blade stopped dead in its tracks against Takeo’s neck, unwilling to budge.
The rakshasa balked, and Takeo grabbed the sword and used the fiery power to rip the blade out of Qadir’s unprepared hand. Qadir let loose one final surprised cry before Takeo dashed the blade point first into the beast’s throat.
Qadir fell back onto the veranda, blood pouring from his neck and filling his windpipe with blood. Not even the infamous rakshasa healing powers could staunch a wound like that, but Takeo made sure by twisting the blade sideways and ripping it out of Qadir’s neck.
Then Takeo stood there, hand wrapped around his sword, and let the burning power pour into his veins. All the pain he felt at Gavin’s death was consumed in enchanted fire, and the thick walls around Takeo’s heart began to seal up again and protected him from the pain he felt inside. He held the sword for several moments, letting the sword work its magic.
Then Takeo dropped the sword and let the pain consume him.
Chapter 17
“Stop crying,” Takeo growled.
Pleiades either tried and failed or never listened in the first place. Seated as she was, in the komainu saddle with Takeo at her back and Gavin’s corpse draped across her lap, it wasn’t difficult to see why she couldn’t stop crying. Everywhere she looked, the mangled, bloodied face of her father filled her vision, and even if she could stem her tears for a brief second, they would return twice as strong a second later.
“I said stop crying.”
She cried harder. Takeo sighed.
This wasn’t how he had hoped things would go.
The komainu had been easy to find, at least. Drawn by the smell of blood, it’d returned to the scene to feast. Takeo had let the creature eat Yeira’s corpse, but he’d preserved Gavin’s by strapping it onto the creature’s back. The komainu whined at this, and its nostrils flared, smelling the fresh meat. Takeo knew it desperately wanted to eat Gavin, too, and it would only be held back by a combination of training and its rider’s willpower.
Perhaps this had been Takeo’s first mistake. When Pleiades had awoken, she’d screamed and run for it. Takeo had let her go while he continued to secure Gavin’s corpse to the mount. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with Gavin yet, but he couldn’t leave him here. Takeo was in no shape to dig a grave, and he didn’t want to burn the body, but he couldn’t leave him to be feasted on either. So, Gavin was coming along, dead and unresistant.
After that was done, Takeo had mounted up and set the komainu to task following Pleiades’ scent. It had tracked her down with ease, finding her huddled in the shadow of a weeping willow, crying and shaking. At the sight of the komainu, she’d foolishly tried to run again, and the komainu had mistaken her for prey. It pounced on her and only a quick jerk of the reins by Takeo had prevented the beast from swallowing her in one bite.
Through a combination of threats and brute force, he’d gotten her to ride in the saddle with him and her father’s corpse.
Now if only she’d stop crying.
“That was foolish, running from a komainu,” he said, trying to distract her. “You never run from one of these creatures if it’s after you and you have nowhere to hide. Did your parents teach you nothing?”
At the sound of parents, Pleiades cried out and covered her face with her hands.
“Okay, bad choice of words,” Takeo said. “I suppose it doesn’t help, but you should know I didn’t want this to happen either. It was your father’s decision. I wanted to kill you instead.”
She kept crying. Apparently, that didn’t work either, and Takeo was beginning to think children were more complicated than he’d originally thought. Then he decided that perhaps it would be better if he said nothing at all.
But that didn’t last long. Between the exhaustion of being awake almost two days straight coupled with the physical agony of a broken hand and the emotional torment of killing yet another friend, Takeo’s patience ran too thin to deal with the soft crying of a little child who thought that somehow she was the victim in all this madness. As if she’d done anything other than be a burden. As if she’d done anything other than drag her useful, deserving, self-sacrificing father to the brink of insanity.
Every pitiful sob, muffled gasp of air, or fearful whimper set Takeo’s teeth on edge as he fought back his own pain. He tried to remember Gavin’s words, to see in her what he saw in the knight, but every time he looked down at the waterfall of blond hair, Yeira’s eyes and face peered back. Then he’d scowl and look away, and she’d cower in her seat and whimper again.
They had a long way to go at such a slow pace. Gavin’s body reeked of dried blood and defecation, and the sun’s heat was only making things worse. He thought surely at some point the girl’s tear ducts would dry up, but either she pulled them from an infinite pool or his patience was nonexistent.
“What am I even going to do with you, huh?” he asked.
She didn’t say anything. She hadn’t said a word this entire time since he’d forced her into the saddle and smacked her to get her to stop fighting. On some level, he supposed that was understandable, and in truth, he didn’t mind that she didn’t answer.
“Do you even know who I am?” he asked.
It wasn’t a stupid question. Takeo had tried hard to keep himself removed from this girl’s life for a reason. He didn’t even repeat her name in his thoughts if he could avoid it: Pleiades. What a strange name. Obviously chosen by Gavin, but what was the significance, if any?
It didn’t matter, though. What a sad life this girl had to start out. First her mother attempts to abort her in an abandoned fortress, then rejects her upon birth—a birth forced premature by jinn magic. Her father is mostly nonexistent, then tortured before her eyes while her family lay captured by the Katsus. She spends a brief period of her life in quiet isolation, only to be witness to her parents’ brutal murders.
And now she was being drug away by Takeo, of all people. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that perhaps she was a victim, in some sense.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked again, this time making sure his tone was not rhetorical.
Pleiades nodded first, then shook her head. Takeo sighed.
“What’s my name?”
“T—T,” Pleiades stuttered, “Tako.”
“Takeo,” he corrected her. “It’s Takeo.”
Exchanging names seemed to help somewhat, though she still trembled and fidgeted too much for Takeo’s thin patience. He growled at her to sit still, and that broke whatever goodwill he’d just established. Pleiades broke into tears again, and Takeo brought the mount to a halt.
“That’s it,” he shouted. “Off! Get off.”
She attempted to scramble from the mount, but she struggled and was too slow for Takeo. He dropped the reins, grabbed her by the arm with his good hand, and hauled her off. She fell on the ground, then scampered away to hide behind the nearest tree.
Takeo hung his head and clenched his teeth. This wasn’t for him. He couldn’t—no, shouldn’t manage a child. He didn’t have the parental love needed to deal with them. It was probably better for both if he just took off, and he was moments away from doing just that when his eyes caught sight of Gavin’s corpse again. The stiff body didn’t peer back so much as it gaped, with a cavity for a face—a hollow shell where once there had been beauty, potential, and all the hope for humanity.
“Damn it all,” Takeo said, voice shaking. “Gavin, you were supposed to survive. It was supposed to be you.”
Fresh tears came, this time to Takeo’s eyes, and he fought bitterly to hold them back, but nothing worked. He bowed his head and wept silently, taking quick breaths so as to prevent a ragged outbreak of sobs. When he could take no more, he relented and grabbed his sword, letting its fire rage within him and burn away all the pain.
From a distance, Pleiades watched.
Now reformed, Takeo took a deep breath and got off his mount. He made the beast sit, not trusting it to stay still with fresh meat strapped to its back. Then Takeo knelt and motioned for Pleiades to come forward.
She did not.
“Come here,” he warned. “Now.”
Pleiades shook but slowly, reluctantly obeyed. She inched over to Takeo until she was within grabbing distance. Her eyes shined with tears and terror. He reached out, touched her gently by the shoulder and pulled her closer. Then he brushed the tears from her eyes with a thumb.
“Shh, there, there,” Takeo said, making sounds he’d overheard mothers use. “Now listen to me. I want you to know that I am sorry about all of this. I never, not in my darkest nightmares, imagined that one day I’d have to care for you. I did everything I could—well, mostly—to ensure that you’d have two parents to care for you growing up, in a way so few children have in this world. I even spared your mother, despite all that bitch did to me, just for the sake of you and your father.”
Takeo paused to stem a tide of emotion, then continued. Pleiades hadn’t moved except to flinch every so often with a fresh, short gasp for air. She watched Takeo intently, though, and he supposed that was good enough.
“I’ll be honest,” he said. “Part of me wants to drop you off with another daimyo family and forget you exist. I think Lady Anagarika would take a liking to you. However, we’ve got a problem. You’re a foreigner, and a bit of a bastard orphan now, for better or worse. If I do that, you’ll grow up with nothing, no potential, no safety from the nightmares of this world. You see, one day, this place will be perfect, but not yet, and not soon. I have much work to do, terrible work. Originally, I’d tried to set up a safe haven for you, away from it all, but now I see that’s just not possible. What’s coming cannot be avoided.
“Am I even making sense? No? Well, that’s okay. I’m sorry, it’s just, I’m a bit tired right now. Let me try again. Let me tell you a story.
“Now, if you’ve rarely heard of me, then I know your father never told you about my brother, did he? Well, I had an older brother—half-brother, as it turns out—named Okamoto Karaoshi. I’ll not spare you the truth; he was cruel to me, and my childhood is perhaps one of my darkest times except for when I lost the love of my life, and except for this moment right here.
“You see, my brother knew the world was a terrible place. He understood its merciless nature and that people who don’t fight for themselves will instead die for others. So, he beat that into me. He molded me, shaped me to be what I am today. For everything he did, I should have hated him, but I didn’t. Do you know why? What am I saying? Of course you don’t know.
“Here’s a story that I’ve never told anyone except your father. It’s the story of the worst thing my brother ever did to me, but also the very thing that saved me.”
Takeo had to stop to take a breath. He knew what he had to do next, but he wasn’t sure if he had the strength for it. He touched his sword with his elbow, felt the fire, and steeled himself.
This had to be done.
“When I was about your age,” Takeo continued, “maybe a little order, my brother and I were on another quest of sorts. I can’t remember what, exactly, as it was so long ago, but I do remember I got hurt. It was something minor, I think. Like I tripped and scraped my elbow or something, but harshly. There was blood, and I was a child, so I cried. I really shouldn’t have, though. I’d seen plenty of blood by this point, but for some reason, this scared me, perhaps because I was worried about what my brother would do.
“I was right to worry.
“Just like I did to you, my brother demanded me to stop, but I couldn’t. I cried and I cried, and he didn’t give me as much time to get over it as I’ve done now. He grabbed me, roughly. He said to me, ‘That’s not pain. I’ll show you pain, and don’t you ever forget it.’ Alas, my brother wasn’t a poet, but he was an effective torturer.
“The beating he gave me wasn’t like the others. He started by breaking my fingers, one by one, then twisting them until I blacked out. When I came to, he whipped me until the bones showed on my back. For a week, he worked on me, snapping ribs, drowning me, burning me. So many scars, Pleiades. So many of the scars I bear now are because of that one week. Pain, do you understand? Real, true pain, for such a long time that I’d never forget. After that week, it would take a lot more than a broken wrist to weaken my resolve.”
Takeo held up his swollen, crooked wrist, and Pleiades whimpered.
“But what he did saved me,” Takeo went on, brushing the tears away from her eyes again. “It saved me because, honestly, I would have gone insane otherwise. Everything that happened to me after that, everything I saw after that, paled in comparison to that one week. I even lied to myself to stay sane. I told myself that my brother loved me, that he wanted what was best for me, even though deep down I knew there was never any real sign that that was true.
“It’s a lie I still carry today, and it’s a lie I must pass onto you.”
Takeo’s stomach flipped, and a tremor went through his body. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The thought of what was to come sickened him, and that sickness had to be pushed down. When his confidence returned, he reached down and grabbed one of Pleiades’ little hands and took hold of one little finger.
“I’m so sorry, little one,” he said. “I couldn’t save your father, but all he wanted was for you to survive. I’ll honor his memory the best I can by keeping you with me and keeping you alive. Unfortunately, I only know one way to do that.
“I’m not as strong as my brother, but this has to be done. You’ve seen some terrible things in your short life, and if you stay with me, you’ll see more. If I do nothing, it will break you. If I hold back, if I show mercy, then you’ll never be strong enough to see through to the other side. You’ll go insane or worse, maybe commit suicide. That’s the mistake I made with your father. I wasn’t hard enough on him, and he wasn’t prepared for what came. If you’re to survive, I can’t make that mistake again.
“Do you understand?”
Pleiades looked at Takeo’s hand, wrapped so gently around her tiny fingers, and shook her head.
“I know,” he replied, fresh tears coming to his eyes. “I know you don’t. But one day you will.”
He snapped her finger, and the screaming began.
* * *
He didn’t work on her for a week. He didn’t have that sort of time. A day was sufficient, even though by the end, exhaustion was moments away from taking him. Fortunately, help arrived.
Takeo should have known he couldn’t stay away for this long without reinforcements. After he’d left, the Hanu camp had come to a bit of a standstill. Takeo had never been much for delegating beyond Kuniko, so the whole place fell into a state of confused limbo as to what to do. Fortunately, Kuniko had recovered enough to give orders from her bed, and the first thing she’d done was to countermand Takeo’s order not to be followed. She cobbled a team of loyal soldiers together and sent them following their lord’s trail.
They came upon Takeo as night fell, and it was all they could do not to question the scene they found.
Pleiades was rushed to a surgeon. Gavin was taken by the soldiers with orders to bury him beside Krunk, and to add what remained of Yeira’s corpse, too. Takeo, too exhausted to ride anymore, was given food, water, and some preliminary medical treatment, then allowed to sleep. In the morning, he followed in Pleiades’ wake to get his wrist snapped back in place.
“Would you like something to numb the pain, my lord?” the doctor asked.
Takeo shook his head and grabbed his family sword with his good hand. The soldiers watched in awe as the doctor worked, snapping the wrist about to put it back into place. All the while Takeo hardly flinched. The ronin’s left hand was wrapped, and the doctor offered advice not to disturb it, and to get some rest.
Takeo ordered his soldiers to stay with Pleiades and to bring her to him the second she was recovered enough to walk. Then he took a mount and rushed back to the frontlines.
It wasn’t the war that brought him so much urgency, however. A remaining loose end needed to be cleaned up, and its name was Emy.
Chapter 18
Through a combination of scouts and intuition, Takeo learned where Nicholas and the others had headed and chased after them. They’d gone to a small coastal village just shy of the Khaz Mal mountains, where the winters would be bitterly cold and the summers mild at best. It was the closest point in Juatwa territory to The North and so the best place for Nicholas’ vikings friends to gather him up. If Nicholas thought it was one of the safest places to hide from Takeo’s forces, he was correct, for this location was so remote that by the time Takeo arrived, he thought for sure his target would be gone.
