by Jeff Minerd
They continued walking.
Strangely enough, a part of Brieze relaxed as she shouldered her way through the crowd. It was a part of her that had been tense for so long she’d forgotten it could be any other way. She considered it normal. She relaxed as she realized that every single face in the crowd was just like hers. Growing up on Footmont, her golden skin, her straight black hair, and her dark, almond-shaped eyes instantly set her apart from everyone else. They drew strange looks at the very least, and often worse. As a child, she’d learned to go through life with her head down, ears closed, and teeth gritted, hating the way she looked. Wishing she could be like everyone else.
And suddenly, here in the city of Kyo, she was like everyone else. Here, she looked normal. She didn’t have to steel herself against strange looks or insults. A tightness around her heart eased, and it was a wonderful feeling. She walked with an extra spring in her step, her aching feet forgotten. She smiled at passersby, and some smiled back, taking no more notice of her than any other face in the crowd. There was a delicious, exhilarating sense of effortless belonging.
Which lasted until the first time Hiroshi introduced her to someone and she opened her mouth.
It was three women, the wife of a ship-captain friend and two of her companions. Hiroshi literally bumped into them. They wore brightly colored coats and walked with their arms crossed and their hands tucked up into their voluminous sleeves. Their hair was done the way women of Spire wore their hair on holidays—braided and curled into elaborate coifs atop their heads, held in place against the wind with shiny pins. Hiroshi greeted them warmly. They all talked so fast Brieze had trouble picking out any words—they blurred together in a relentless rush. Hiroshi introduced her. She bowed and said in the Eastern tongue, “I am pleased to meet you, and I am enjoying my visit to your wonderful city.”
But she hadn’t spoken more than a few words when the women’s smiles changed to the polite but pained expression people might wear at a small child’s musical recital that is going badly. In the space of a few words, she’d become foreign to them.
Hiroshi repeated what she’d said. The women smiled relieved smiles and nodded. The captain’s wife spoke slowly and loudly to Brieze, enunciating one word, “Yo-koso.”
This time, Brieze’s scowl was no more than a little quirk at the corner of her mouth, quickly covered up as she bowed and said “Arigatou.”
Brieze sighed as the women took their leave. “Why doesn’t anybody here understand me?” she asked.
“People talk very fast in Kyo,” Hiroshi said, resuming their walk. “And the city dialect is different from anywhere else.”
“My talking seems to offend people.”
“Well, you have a very thick accent, and you mispronounce many words. And people in Kyo feel very strongly about speaking properly.”
“Your crew didn’t have any problems with the way I talk.”
“Language is much more casual on a cargo ship. People are from many different places so there are many different ways of speaking. Also, none of my crew would dare correct you when you spoke. That would be disrespectful.”
Brieze sighed. More of that wonderful respect. She walked with her shoulders hunched against the cold, mechanically trudging behind Hiroshi.
The pain in her feet came back with a vengeance.
Kyo was like Selestria in one way—its streets were a tangled mess. Hiroshi led Brieze ever upward along twisting and branching avenues and lanes, through crowded squares and open-air markets, sometimes taking a quick shortcut down alleyways so narrow she had to turn sideways to shuffle through. And no matter where they went, they were always smack in the middle of a crowd of people. How can people live like this? Brieze thought to herself. If one more person bumps into me, I’m going to scream.
When they finally reached Mama Kasshoku’s boarding house, her feet were on fire. It was a large house that, like most houses in Kyo, consisted mostly of stone pillars holding up a tiled roof. There was no door. They walked between two pillars and they were inside. The house’s interior was made up of flimsy looking paper partitions instead of walls. They looked to Brieze like she could easily put a fist through them. Behind some of them, shadows moved. Despite the lack of proper walls the house was warm. Several cheery fires burned in iron grates.
Hiroshi rang a bell on a stand. Footsteps stirred in the house.
Mama Kasshoku herself appeared. A thickly built, matronly woman of about forty, she wore an apron dusted with rice flour and wiped her hands with a cloth as she came. There was a dab of rice flour on her broad nose, and her salt-and-pepper hair was liberally dusted with it, too. Strands of her hair had escaped from the bun on the top of her head and stuck to her shiny forehead and cheeks. She wore a frown of disapproval as she strode toward them. A frown that seemed mostly fixed on Brieze, though she spared some for the captain. Evidently, she’d been interrupted in her preparations for the evening meal.
Mama Kasshoku pointed at Brieze’s feet and said, “Tut!”
The exclamation was one of those universal sounds mothers make to reprimand children.
Brieze looked down at her feet, then up at Hiroshi. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Ah, you should have taken off your shoes on entering the house. I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you.” Hiroshi stood in bare feet. His boots were leaning against a pillar. She’d been so engrossed in studying the house’s interior she hadn’t seen him take them off.
“Sorry,” she mumbled to Mama Kasshoku, forgetting even to try to speak in the Eastern tongue. She stepped out of her shoes.
“Ach!” Mama Kasshoku cried in horror and dismay, pointing to Brieze’s feet.
Her socks were much the worse for wear after her months-long voyage. Still, they were a color you could tell had once been white. The heels and ankles, though, were soaked red with the blood of broken blisters.
Mama Kasshoku called loudly over her shoulder, barking orders that were answered by multiple voices from the house’s interior.
“Hai!”
“Hai mamasan!”
She put her hands on her hips and launched into a vigorous scolding of Captain Hiroshi. Brieze didn’t need a translator. The tone of her voice, her finger pointing at Brieze’s feet and wagging in the captain’s face, made it clear she was scolding him for being so careless as to allow a young girl to walk so far and harm her feet. Brieze bit down on a smile. It was entertaining to see Hiroshi looking like an abashed child, stammering and offering excuses which Mama Kasshoku was having none of.
“It’s nothing,” Brieze said. “It doesn’t hurt much.”
But her comment was ignored as two of the house staff bustled up, one carrying a small wooden stool, which he placed before her and invited her to sit on. The other carried a basin of steaming, soapy water, which she set near Brieze’s feet.
Mama Kasshoku herself knelt to remove her socks. But she made a face as she caught a whiff of Brieze’s feet, which, unfortunately, had not been properly washed during her voyage. She muttered rapidly under her breath. Brieze caught the word banjin. Barbarian. Mama Kasshoku stood and ordered her staff to remove Brieze’s socks and wash her feet, which they did with obvious reluctance. Brieze sat there and allowed it, petrified with embarrassment. She couldn’t move her mouth. Her face blazed red. Still, the warm soapy water was soothing as they placed her feet in the basin and gingerly sponged them with a cloth.
Hiroshi and Mama Kasshoku talked. Then, after giving more orders to her staff, she took her leave and marched back to the kitchen at the back of the house.
“I have arranged for you to stay here at a good price,” Hiroshi said. “However, there are two conditions. First, that all your dirty clothes be laundered as soon as possible. You can leave them in a pile outside your room and the staff will wash them. For a small fee, of course.”
“Fine,” Brieze said. “And the second?”
“That you take a bath as soon as possible. This is being a
rranged in your room.”
“For a small fee, of course,” she said.
Hiroshi nodded. “Mama Kasshoku’s is a respectable place. You’ll be safe and well cared for here. This is a good neighborhood, unlike some of the unsavory neighborhoods closer to the palace where many visitors stay.”
“Unsavory?”
“Rowdy taverns, brothels, opium dens. And the disreputable people who patronize them. Drinkers and thieves and worse. I don’t want you exposed to that.”
Brieze felt a tug of affection for the captain. He sounded like her wizard father. “Is this goodbye then?” she asked, and the thought unsettled her. Hiroshi was the only person she really knew in Kyo. The only person looking out for her.
He smiled and tousled her hair. “No, my little beast-slayer. Not goodbye. I will come by tomorrow to check on you. And once I have settled affairs with my cargo you must come to my house for dinner and meet my wife and children.”
“I’d like that,” she said. She was still sitting as the woman dried her feet with a towel. But she stood and gave the captain a hug.
He hugged her, then put his boots back on. “Don’t forget someone from the navy will come by soon to make sure you are actually here. They’ll probably ask you more questions about your stay.” He bowed, flashed her one last grin, and left.
Brieze sat, and the woman finished drying her feet. The man dabbed at her broken blisters with some kind of salve. They each wrapped one of her feet in soft bandages.
“Come,” the woman said in the Western tongue. “Your room.”
The man picked up her backpack, which Hiroshi had left. He also picked up her dirty socks, gripping them between a thumb and forefinger as if he held the tail of a dead rat. He gestured for Brieze to follow the woman.
They led Brieze down a “hallway” of paper partitions, past “doors” that were no more than sheer silk curtains. The woman pointed to the door of Brieze’s room. Brieze stepped through the curtain. The paper-walled room was tiny—a few paces long by a few paces wide. There was a bed of sorts, a thin mat on the floor with a pillow that looked like a burlap sack of grain. A low nightstand. A washstand with a pitcher and basin. A chamber pot. There was nothing like a window. Light filtered in dimly through the walls. An oil lamp and some candles sat on the nightstand.
The man set her backpack and socks on the floor. The woman asked, “Dinner here, or…” she didn’t know the words. She pointed outside the room. “…there? With others.”
“I’ll have dinner here,” Brieze said. After the embarrassments she’d already suffered, she had no desire to have dinner in the common room with Mama Kasshoku’s other guests. Who knew what new indignities and mortifications awaited the banjin there?
“We bring bath,” the woman said. “Put smelly clothes there.” She wrinkled her nose rudely and pointed to the hall.
“Arigatou,” Brieze said.
Evidently, she didn’t say it right. The woman stifled a giggle. She and the man smirked at each other, made hasty bows, and ducked out of the room.
The “bath” was another basin of hot water, slightly bigger than the one they washed her feet in. They set this on the floor of Brieze’s room along with a chunk of soap, washcloth, and towel. Once they’d left, she stripped, unzipping and peeling off her flightsuit and underclothes. She kept one eye on the flimsy “door” as she gave herself a vigorous sponge bath. The warm water and soap felt like a new experience to her—a priceless luxury. She stood in the basin and used the washcloth to squeeze warm water over the top of her head. That felt even better. She undid her braid, lathered up her hair, and washed away months of grime. Heavenly. She combed out the tangles until her hair fell straight and shiny like a curtain all the way down to the small of her back.
She fished out the one clean change of clothes she’d been saving from her backpack and put them on. She gathered up her dirty clothes to place in the hall outside the room. Now that she was clean, she realized how filthy the old clothes were. She sniffed them and wrinkled her nose just as the rude woman had. She blushed to remember that this pile of grubby laundry was what she’d shown up to Mama Kasshoku’s in.
Something fell out of the wad of clothes and hit the floor. Brieze stooped and picked it up. It was her mother’s gray, heart-shaped stone. The one she’d slipped into her hands during the farewell on the dock. Brieze had tucked the stone into an inner pocket of her flightsuit and forgotten about it. She turned it over in her hands. It felt strangely warm. May our love last forever, it said. She got an odd feeling handling the stone. She felt as if someone else had been holding it, and it was still warm from their touch. She had a fleeting vision of her mother. But it was not the mother she knew. It was a young girl laughing, standing at the edge of a little churning brook. She was calling to someone, beckoning with her hands.
Voices passing in the hallway broke the spell. Brieze blinked and came back to reality. She put the dirty clothes in the hall, and she set the stone on the low table that served as a nightstand next to her bed.
Dinner was good, a fish stew with noodles and vegetables in more of that tasty coconut broth, brought in a steaming bowl on a wooden tray and set on the floor. The staff removed the basin of dirty bathwater and the clothes outside her room.
With dinner done, she lit one of the candles, got out her paper and ink, and wrote letters. She had a lot of news to tell and many people to tell it to. Her mother. Her wizard father. Tak. She missed them all, was suddenly aware of how far away from them she was. She felt lonely. But writing letters helped, as it did before. She lay on her back in the bed, with her head propped up on the pillow, and wrote on her folded-up knees. She wrote long into the night in a pool of candlelight. When the candle burned down to a guttering squib, she blew it out, wrapped herself in the blanket, and lay her head on the pillow.
Sleep came easier than she thought it would. She thought the flimsy walls and door would make her feel exposed and vulnerable. But they offered just enough privacy and protection. Sky riders don’t like to be closed in by low roofs and thick walls. In its own way, the room had a similar feel to the rooms Brieze knew because it let in plenty of air. It felt open. It allowed you to breathe. In Selestria, they accomplished this with large windows. In Kyo, they used paper walls.
Silvery moonlight filtered through the walls. The ghostly light glimmered on the heart-shaped stone on the nightstand. The carved characters stood out in sharp relief. Her eyes were drawn to it. She gazed at it, eyelids blinking and drooping. The heavy breathing and snores of other sleepers came to her through the walls.
Soon, her own slow, deep breathing joined them.
THIRTEEN
In her dream, Brieze was back on Footmont, hunting flying squirrels like she used to when she was a kid.
She flushed one out and chased it through the forest as it flitted from tree to tree. She ran with her bow in her hands, an arrow knocked. The trees were tall and thick and close. Wind rustled through their leaves. The sky was evening lavender.
The squirrel swooped, dove, hit the ground—and turned into something else. Something larger on four legs, running up the slope though the trees. Brieze ran faster, closing in on it. The sky was dimming, dusk gathering beneath the trees. She caught glimpses of her quarry—a wild boar, grunting and moving fast on its short legs. No time to stop and take aim.
The boar crashed through a tangle of underbrush and changed into something else. Something bigger, something on two feet, moving slower but still fleeing uphill, snapping branches as it went. It was fully dusk now, darkness gathering in pools on the forest floor. She couldn’t make out what she chased, but she was close enough to hear its ragged breathing. It was tiring, slowing. Soon she would have it.
And then it was trapped! It ran smack into a sheer stony cliff face. No way to flee forward, and before it could turn to either side she was on it, just yards away, her bow raised and drawn, her arrow tip trained on its heart.
It was a man. He turned to face her and cowered, h
is hands raised in a pleading, defensive gesture. He was made of shadows. His face was a blank.
But she knew that this was her father, Kaishou Fujiwara.
A woman’s voice woke her. It called from outside the door to her room. “Good morning! Enter please…?”
Brieze sat up groggily in bed and mumbled something. Golden sunlight filtered in through the paper walls. The woman, the same rude one from last night, entered with a breakfast tray and set it on the floor near the bed. Although it was the same woman, her attitude was completely different. She kept her eyes respectfully lowered. And when Brieze thanked her in the Eastern language she didn’t giggle or smirk at her pronunciation. She bowed gravely and left quickly on silent feet.
“Huh,” Brieze said to herself. “I wonder what that’s all about.”
In the city of Kyo, with so many people living shoulder to shoulder, news travels fast. Yesterday, captain Hiroshi and his crew had talked often and loudly about Brieze killing the Nagmor and saving their lives. By morning, the entire city—all three mountains—knew the story. Brieze was about to get another healthy dose of the respect she loved so much.
Mama Kasshoku herself came in to examine her feet. She brought a small wooden stool, set it on the floor, and with a deferent gesture invited Brieze to sit. After looking her feet over and giving them a few experimental prods and squeezes, she seemed satisfied with their condition. “Feet like princess,” she said as she squeezed them. “Soft.” She applied more salve, wrapped Brieze’s feet in fresh bandages, and, like her staff, bowed gravely and left quickly.
Brieze turned her attention to the breakfast. A pot of tea, milky and sweet, and spiced with all sorts of strange but pleasant flavors. She tasted clove and cardamom. There were three small fried dumplings on a plate, drizzled with honey and sprinkled with sesame seeds. They were delicious. She tried to eat them slowly, but they were gone all too soon. Her stomach rumbled as she licked honey from her fingers. The breakfast had awakened her appetite without properly satisfying it.