The boy nodded slowly, more to himself, as if remembering something.
“What is to become of me?”
“We are working on a solution, but it may take time. In the worst case scenario you’ll have to wait until Minazuki…”
“That’s two months from now,” Tokojiro added an explanation to his translation.
“…when the Dejima magistrates make their annual report to the city masters,” the priestess continued. “We could smuggle you into their entourage then.”
“Can’t you at least get the message out?”
“As soon as the Overwizard arrives back from Edo, we will let him know of your plight, of course.”
The boy looked at Tokojiro quizzically.
“Edo is the capital city,” the interpreter said, “far to the north of here.”
“And what’s an Overwizard?”
He really knows nothing!
“The Bataave commander at Dejima.”
“Is there anything else you would like to ask?” Lady Kazuko interrupted their exchange.
“I just wanted to congratulate Sir Tokojiro. His Seaxe is very good.”
The interpreter bowed, surprised at the praise. “Thank you. I studied with Black Raven Somerled.”
No reaction to the name. Of course, why did I expect otherwise?
“Now, if you are willing to answer,” the priestess interjected, “I would ask you my own questions.”
“Naturally.”
“Tell me, what happened to you before arriving in Yamato—on a beam of light, if Nagomi is to be believed.”
The boy hesitated.
He does not want to reveal too much, thought Tokojiro. Black Raven was just the same when we asked him how he got to Kiyō…
“I… was on a ship sailing along the shores of Qin with my father. There was a disaster, the ship started sinking. I… had a spell on me that was supposed to save me from death, though I didn’t know exactly how it worked. I can only guess it was what brought me here.”
“Your father was a Dracalish sailor?”
“He is a free man of Gwynedd, as am I,” the boy announced proudly. “An officer and a diplomat.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Tokojiro interrupted.
“Gwynedd lies to the west of Dracaland. There is no border between the two, and one monarch sits on both thrones, but we rule ourselves as a separate nation.”
“I… I see.”
The interpreter turned to Lady Kazuko trying to translate the complicated sentence as best as he could, but she silenced him, not interested in the foreign politics.
“Your father,” she asked instead, “do you know his whereabouts?”
“We were separated in the disaster. I… don’t know where he is now, but I believe he’s alive.”
The priestess gave the boy a long, inquisitive look.
“The items you have with you,” she continued, “I was told about them. Can you tell me how they have come into your possession?”
“The dragon figurine was a gift from my father, he found it on one of his travels.”
“And the black box?”
The foreigner paused again.
“My grandfather sailed these seas, and he once came to this very city,” he divulged at last.
“Your grandfather was a Bataavian, then?”
“No, a man of Gwynedd as well. He was on board a Dracalish ship called Phaeton.”
“I remember!”
Lady Kazuko’s eyes widened as she spoke. Tokojiro remained professionally calm, even though he also recognised the ship’s name.
“I was Nagomi’s age then. It was a famous incident. The commander of our fleet committed suicide because he was unable to stop the warship leaving the harbour.”
“Suicide…?”
“Such is the law of this land. There can only be one punishment for failure. It was after the Phaeton incident and the great fire of Dejima that the law against foreigners was strengthened, but the sailors from that ship never landed in the city, as far as I know—so how did your grandfather come to have a Kutsuki lady’s jewellery box?”
“Is that what it is? What’s a Kutsuki?”
“The markings on the box, that’s the crest of the Kutsuki clan of Fukuchiyama Castle, far to the north, beyond the Imperial Capital.”
“I don’t know anything about the clan or the castle,” the boy said, shaking his head, “but the box was brought to the ship by a woman who fled from the city. It seems she and my grandfather had… been friends for some time.”
“How curious,” the priestess said, “I don’t think I ever heard that part of the story. You wouldn’t know who the woman was, or why she was fleeing from Kiyō?”
“All I know is that her name was Ōmon. Her picture is in the box, and I can only guess that golden buckle also belonged to her. I think she died not long after meeting my grandfather. In his diary he mentions a man clad in a crimson robe, who was chasing after her, but I don’t know anything else.”
“A man in a crimson robe?”
“A flowing crimson robe, his hair was long, dark, flowing in the wind and his eyes gleamed like nuggets of pure gold,” the boy recited, obviously having learned the diary off by heart.
“I see.”
The priestess’s brow furrowed in deep thought. They were both silent now. A single grey starling chirped outside as the sun slowly climbed up the morning sky. Tokojiro looked from the priestess to the boy, waiting to continue the translation. He hoped it would not last long; his throat was parched and his head throbbed after the night at the inn. Lady Kazuko stood up.
“I must now proceed to my duties. Your conversation has given me much to think about,” she said.
The boy stood as well. The High Priestess rang a small porcelain bell.
“The girl who brought you here will take you back to your room. She is sworn to secrecy, but not everyone is, so be careful. I want to assure you we are doing what we can to help. The streets outside may be dangerous, but you are in the care of the shrine now. You are safe here.”
“I am grateful for your help,” the boy said, bowing.
“We could do no less.”
You could have sent him to the magistrate, thought Tokojiro, and saved us all a beheading.
By the evening Bran began to grow hungry. The sunlight was fading outside, and the twilight choir of birds hiding in the rose and magnolia bushes started in earnest. Little shy wrens and chatty redstarts, noisy finches, blackbirds and thrushes with their artisan melodies, all erupted into song, a concert punctuated by the regular staccato of a lone cuckoo somewhere in the distance.
The entire part of the building seemed cut off from any visitors. There were faint noises and voices all around the compound and in the garden, but never near his room. Through the window he saw some women pass from one pavilion to another and once he thought he caught a glimpse of the red-haired girl. As the night drew in the garden fell quiet, and only a few women remained—priestesses or shrine attendants, he guessed. The atmosphere was calm and focused, monastic, the people moving purposefully and in peace.
The place was having a strange effect on him. He felt acutely alone, melancholic. He realised he had been feeling like this not just since waking up in the Itō’s household, but for much longer… since leaving Brigstow at least. Perhaps, he thought, he had been alone all his life, but only now with his mind so clear in this meditative atmosphere had he began to notice it.
He wished there was somebody he could tell about all his adventures, all the wonders he had seen on the journey. Neither his father nor the crew and soldiers on Ladon had been interested—they had all seen much more in their lives. There was nobody waiting for his stories back at Llambed. Of the people whom he could have counted among his friends, Eithne was lost beyond the Hawthorn Wall at Mon, Hywel had joined the dragoons and was probably already seeing his share of the world, and Madoc had never been interested in what lay outside Gwynedd. Would any of the
m even remember him when he returned—if he returned? Bran had no knack for making his friendships last.
He sighed, looking out through the window. The moon peered between the branches of the gingko tree as in a beautiful painting. So much wonder, lost in his own head… If he died now it would perish, like the memories of those poor souls gone down with the Ladon. Perhaps he should start writing a memoir, like his grandfather? He opened his satchel and took out the Keswick pencil and what remained of the notepad, but his hand hovered with no purpose over the oiled-paper sheet. He didn’t know what to write. He didn’t even know what date it was.
His stomach rumbled and he remembered he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. He was resigned to going to sleep hungry when a female voice called him from outside the room. He slid the door away cautiously and saw the elderly woman who questioned him earlier, her long, greying hair let loose down the flowing light green robe. She was holding a tray with several bowls of food and a lit oil lamp. It was already getting dark outside. The woman observed him intently with wise gleaming eyes set deeply within a wrinkled face.
The interpreter had called her “Lady Kazuko”, he remembered—the High Priestess. She had been very inquisitive in their morning conversation. Bran was uncertain how much of his story he should have revealed to her. In practice, MFS Ladon was, at the moment of the disaster, a navy ship at war, and its expedition to Jiankang was a military matter. Bran knew enough of army protocol to be wary of mentioning too many details. Why did she care so much about the contents of his satchel? What use was it to her or to anyone? Eventually, though, he’d had little choice but to answer her questions. The woman most probably held the key to his release. Certainly she had good connections—after all, she had managed to procure a Seaxe interpreter at short notice. He was surprised they even had one in a city so cut off from the outside world. It seemed prudent to stay on her good side.
He took the tray from her and bowed as best he could.
“Thank you, Lady Kazuko,” he said in Prydain.
The woman smiled silently, turned away and disappeared into the darkness of the corridor without a sound.
Bran was nonplussed. What was all that about? Why couldn’t the blind girl bring him the food? Did she simply wish to check on him?
The exquisite smell of food reached his nostrils and he remembered how famished he was. An entire mackerel grilled to perfect crispiness and an aromatic broth with thick noodles accompanied the usual bowl of rice and cup of cha, the hot bitter drink. He put the tray on the straw mat and waited for the meal to cool down—he could still only eat it with his fingers, the way to use the wooden sticks remaining a mystery. The mackerel was large and fat, oil dribbled down his chin and stained the purple kimono as he sank his teeth into the soft moist flesh.
I must seem like a barbarians to them, he realised. It’s a good thing nobody’s here to see my clumsiness.
Bran was writing down some of the new Yamato words he had just learned from Nagomi. “Phoode”—brush, he started, “soomee”—ink, and so on, adding words he had learned earlier until he reached the end of the page. The red-haired girl had provided him with writing utensils the locals used and explained in mime how to create the thick ink from black stone and water, but the thin brush was too unwieldy for Bran and he reverted to a pencil.
The next sheet was invitingly blank, but so was Bran’s mind He glanced out the window and tried to draw a sketch of the marvellous garden scene outside, branches of a tall gingko tree strikingly black against the blue, cloudless sky, with tiny green dots of young buds and offshoots. The rooftops of the shrine compound, grey and black in the sun, composed a perfect frame for the image.
Bran looked down at his piece of paper and sighed. He had never been any good at art. The Academy taught him to draw maps from dragonback—a necessity for a future soldier—but that was the limit of his artistic abilities. The sketch was just a poor jumble of shoddily drawn lines. To top it off, the paper itself was full of smudges where his hand clumsily smeared over soft graphite.
Bran reached for his satchel’s front pocket and took out a small sharpening knife. He had to be careful—now that he had no idea how long it would take him to get out of this place, every sliver of pencil was precious. The knife’s blade was dull and beginning to rust– he had forgotten to take proper care of it since his arrival in Yamato. It snapped and cut him on the index finger.
Clenching his fist to stop the blood trickling from the small wound, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes, listening to the soft wafts of the wind whistling gently through the gutters and roof tiles, the rushing of the flat, fan-shaped leaves of the tree outside and the incessant tweeting of a family of swallows building an early nest in the eaves of one of the buildings. Did the priestess really mean he could be kept here for two months? There must be another way… He hadn’t told anyone about where the dragon was yet. He could tell Emrys was getting near. What if it would find its way to Kiyō? Bran could only imagine the chaos the city would be thrown into by the appearance of the jade green beast. He wondered where the dragons of Yamato were kept—he had not seen any yet, although they seemed omnipresent in the carved ornaments and painted ceilings throughout the shrine. Perhaps they were all kept on the other island the interpreter had mentioned. How big was this country, anyway? Tokojiro called it an “Empire”—was it just a case of mistranslation, or could there really have been enough ocean to hide a land the size of Qin or Rome? Not for the first time Bran wished he had paid more attention to geography…
The ring on his finger lit up like a flare. He was overwhelmed by a flood of images and emotions. He could barely gather his bearings, but he was on a beach somewhere—in the waves—on a rocky reef—in the trees—back on the sand. Panic and anger swept through him, danger and pain. A group of people—short stocky men with spears, nets, bows and arrows—approached him, creeping. He tried to get away, but a net entangled his arms, his legs and his… wings?
Bran opened his eyes, the images perished. He immediately realised what he had just seen—Emrys had been captured. Its abductors looked like the Yamato, but he couldn’t be sure, as everything had happened too quickly. The boy did not know if what he had just experienced happened now or was an echo of some earlier events. He tried to focus again, but there was no more response.
The dragon rider fell back against the wall, his heart racing. He could not wait any longer until whenever his hosts deemed him ready to sneak to the Bataavians. He had to do something, but what? Leaving alone was out of the question. He had tried this once already, and it had only brought trouble. Besides, now he had even less idea in which part of the city he was and how to get from here to Dejima. No, to save Emrys he needed to get help from the few Yamato people he already knew.
CHAPTER XVI
Keinosuke arrived late. He sat down by the table beside Shōin, unpacked his bag and prepared for the lesson, while the others waited.
Satō glanced at him with irritation, but said nothing. He dares to come? What’s he playing at?
“We’re talking about Elemental Affiliation today,” she explained, and continued from where Keinosuke’s arrival interrupted her, “can you guess what element is your teacher’s preferred one?”
“Sui—water,” moaned Shōin, rubbing his arm in remembrance of the freezing punishment then laughing.
Satō laughed too. Keinosuke was silent and distant, obviously thinking about something other than the lesson. The wizardess bit her lips, but decided to ignore the boy’s behaviour.
“You will choose your element, eventually, or rather, it will choose you. You will find some of the transformations are easier to perform, some invocations don’t require as much effort, some enchantments come more naturally. Through practise and understanding of the nature of your Power, you will learn more of this special communion with elements.”
“Do all wizard
s suffer from this limitation?” Keinosuke asked, suddenly breaking his broody silence.
“We don’t regard this as a limitation, it’s just a way the Power manifests itself…”
“It is a limitation if you confine yourself to just one aspect over others.”
“It’s only as much of a limitation as becoming a samurai confines you to not being a farmer or a merchant,” Satō argued.
She preferred him when he was simply sitting quietly and listening to the lecture. The boy was barely capable as a wizard, in fact, Shōin, for all his giddiness and goofing off, had much greater innate talent and showed much more progress, but was boastful and arrogant, and interested only in self-aggrandisement.
“Nonetheless, are there wizards able to wield all elements with the same ease?”
Satō rolled her eyes.
“Yes, they are called Prismatics and they only appear once every few generations. They reach great fame and power—then they die young,” she added grimly.
“Why is that?” Keinosuke pressed her, undeterred.
“Their life energy is spent too fast. They accomplish wondrous feats of magic, but the conflicting elements within eventually tear them apart.”
The lesson continued in peace and quiet. The boys wrote down a long list of historic wizards and their biographical notes then tried to freeze a cup of water. Shōin managed to cover the surface of the liquid with a thin layer of frost remarkably quickly. At the same time, Keinosuke’s cup barely cooled down. Frustrated, the boy decided to heat it up instead. He clutched the thin-walled clay cup in his hand. Suddenly it broke apart. A potsherd scratched his palm and he started bleeding.
Satō quickly wrapped the wound in a piece of cloth. Keinosuke was beaming.
“Did you see it? I only wanted to heat it up, but it exploded! Does that mean I am a fire wizard?”
The Shadow of Black Wings (The Year of the Dragon, Book 1) Page 21