by Jaida Jones
“He insulted you,” I murmured, lowering my head.
“You didn’t have to strike him!” Mamoru whirled around. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with hurt and anger. “We aren’t… there anymore, Kouje. You don’t have to shelter me so from everything. I would have borne his insult gladly if that was to be the price of crossing the border. We must both make sacrifices.”
“You don’t know what he expected as the price for crossing the border,” I said, the words coming so unexpectedly that I didn’t have the time to stop them. “For their generosity at the noodle house!”
Mamoru sucked his breath in sharply, perhaps in surprise at my sudden outburst, but the words were rushing from my mouth now, as if they’d found a hole in the dam that had always kept them back. I lifted my head to look him in the eyes.
“He said that he didn’t know about Kichi, but that he at least expected a chance between your legs before we parted ways. That it was the proper thing to do—and neighborly. That you couldn’t expect to get anything for free these days.”
I could feel the bile rising in my throat, sharp and hot all over again just remembering Jiang’s words. Even if the man hadn’t known who he was speaking to, it didn’t matter. My obligation to Mamoru ran deeper than the fealty I’d sworn. That had to be true, or else how could I have ignored the Emperor’s command in the first place? The sooner I dealt with the troublesome rebellion within me the better. It was causing problems left and right. I couldn’t tame it. It made me too sharp with him, too cross with myself.
“All the same,” Mamoru insisted, though he looked troubled now, and his voice betrayed the fact that he was growing increasingly distressed. He had balled his hands into fists, and his voice cracked in places, like the spider-line fissures in the fine lacquer of an ornamental table. “I didn’t know that, but as you are not my brother in truth, it is not your duty to protect my honor!”
“It is not for duty that I do it!” I said, raising my voice to be heard over his. I took a breath to rein my temper in. I could not afford to lose it again, so hot upon the heels of the first time. “Mamoru,” I added, more softly. The name still sounded strange to my hearing, such a fine name on such an uncultured tongue, but I had to do my best to please my lord at his command when I could, as it seemed there were many areas where I could not.
I did not know what was worse. That it might become easier to say it, or that it might not.
My lord ducked his head down. When he lifted it, his eyes were bright with tears. They were not the beautiful, elegant tears that I’d seen the women of the court weeping, for the loss of their sons and husbands during the war, or even the restrained weeping done behind fans and closed doors for the death of the Emperor. These were messy tears, streaking down his cheeks and reddening his nose. His breath came in short, painful gulps, as though he was no longer able to control himself. I was reminded sharply of the boy he had been, back when the rules laid on our heads had not been so unyielding. I had allowed myself to comfort him, once, when it had been clear that mere words would not do the trick.
Did I remember the way of it now?
“Why?” my lord asked, the word nearly lost in his next wet intake of breath. “I don’t understand it. Why?”
“Mamoru,” I said again, counseling my voice to hold firm and steady. If I was to calm my lord, I would have to be the steady one. This I knew, above all else.
I reached out one hand to take him by the arm, to draw him close enough to put my arms around him. They knew the way, and it was not so difficult a thing to remember as I’d feared. I could feel the rough, homespun garments stretched thin against his back. He was trembling with the force of his weeping. I could feel it choked and wet against my neck.
“Perhaps what I hold for you is not duty, but something closer to friendship,” I told him in hushed tones, willing him to understand what I myself did not. “Is that not how we are meant to conduct ourselves now that we’ve left the palace?”
It was not entirely the truth, since my disobedience had begun in earnest before we’d ever left the palace. How was I to explain that there were some things that were more important than duty to me, when all I’d known my entire life was simply that? It was everything that I’d been trained for, so that in the end I was shaped as keenly as a sword built for its wielder. Like a sword, I had no other purpose in life save what my wielder gave me. To act alone was unthinkable, and yet I had done it.
“You should have controlled yourself better,” Mamoru told me, his voice slippery and filled with rebuke.
Before I could apologize, or try to put into rational speech the dilemma turning as a tempest within my head, his arms came up around my neck. It told me better than any words that he’d forgiven me.
“I know,” I said, speaking to his former scolding. “I can offer no excuse for my actions. They were inexcusable.”
“Still,” he murmured, snuffling around the word for a moment. “I suppose there is room for a certain amount of irrationality within… friendship.”
“If you are kind enough to allow it,” I acknowledged, feeling myself immeasurably lucky once again for my lord’s particular vein of kindness.
He sighed so deeply that I felt it in my bones. It was a sigh of great relief, from a man who had long been bearing a weight far too heavy for him. Perhaps my lord, too, had been in need of unburdening himself.
“Do you know, Kouje, I feel as though I’ve needed to get that out for ages.”
“We’d best be on the move,” I told him, running my hands sensibly down his back, in a movement meant to induce calm and clear-headedness. “Before the rain starts.”
My lord blinked, and cast his eyes upward to the leafy canopy hiding the clouds that had formed above our heads. To my surprise, he smiled.
“It’s been a dreadfully warm summer,” he said. His face was entirely changed when he was happy. It was all I could do not to swear then and there that happiness was all I would ever seek to bring him. “The land could do with a little rain. I believe it is dry this season. So I have overheard,” he added, and colored at his cheeks and ears.
“In that, you are correct,” I said, ignoring the rest and releasing Mamoru from my hold.
My lord was thinner than he looked, but there was a core of steel beneath all his delicacy that any man would have been proud of. Perhaps it was presumptuous of me to be proud of him, and yet I found that I was anyway, for I had played some part in his upbringing.
“Kouje,” Mamoru said, sounding almost hesitant.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Oh, well it’s nothing really. It’s only… your hair.”
“Ah,” I said, understanding at once the need for such levity. “Well, if you would be so good as to fix it for me, my friend, I would be forever in your debt.”
A smile touched my lord’s eyes at his new title, one more commonly acceptable outside the palace, and yet with a hint of the secret between us.
“You’ll have to sit,” he said, judging the distance between my height and his.
I did.
There was another rustling in the bush, some fox or badger rooting for its evening meal. Our stolen horse snorted impatiently, having finished his own rest and drunk his fill of water. If it was to be raining soon, then we would be better served to leave as quickly as we could. I felt cold dread in my stomach when I thought of what the border crossing might hold for us, but we would come to it sooner or later, and it was my firm belief that sooner was better than later.
That time, when I helped my lord back onto the horse, he smiled at me.
“It shouldn’t be long now until we are at the crossing,” he said. In his voice I could detect none of the worry I myself was feeling.
My lord was, as he’d ever been, determined to look on the future with hope. In that aspect, he was much braver than I, since it seemed far more realistic to plan for a situation that would neither be the best nor the worst possible outcome, but something closer to in between.
It was far easier not to fix one’s hope to either. I didn’t understand how my lord could go on being optimistic without the disappointment of his losses eventually dragging him downward. My lord deserved someone who would not worry, as he did.
He needed a friend, and perhaps not a retainer, after all.
“Now then, brother,” Mamoru said, with another relieved sigh. “Mount up.”
We came to the road just as the rain began to fall, fat drops quickly mottling the road dark and light. My lord laughed, and turned his face up toward it, whereas I might otherwise have tried to shield his head from letting a single drop land. At the palace, Mamoru had always carried a parasol, alongside the other fine lords, so as to shield his skin from the sun and the rain alike. On the road, he had already suffered the attentions of the sun, so that his nose and cheeks betrayed a faint pink; the only time I had ever seen him colored so was when he’d been taken over by fever. Just then, it seemed that my lord was about to be rained on, without any recourse or parasols to better our situations.
I’d never have guessed he’d look so delighted at the prospect.
His laughter broke as the sound of wooden wheels creaking toward us caught our attention and startled us each from our more private thoughts. I felt a moment’s reassurance, since that was evidently the sound of rustling I had heard. There was a large wagon approaching, led by a black-and-white horse and followed by a half dozen men and women, their livelihood carried in bundles on their backs. They seemed to me to be a troupe of entertainers, the sort of group of acrobats, dancers, and jugglers that went from town to town to try their fortunes with the crowds in a bigger city. They must have been coming from the border town as we were, since it was the largest hereabouts, and such groups didn’t fare well in small villages, where the men and women had to hold on tightly to what coin they had.
Their caravan bore colorful markings, though as it approached I could see that the red paint was fading in places and one spiraling purple curlicue had all but flaked off. One of their wheels had been recently replaced.
They slowed as they passed us, and I felt my heart give an involuntary jump in my chest. Then, those who rode inside the caravan threw open their doors, and I realized that they had only just noted the rain, as we did, and thought to let their fellows ride inside after all.
One of them, a woman, eyed us curiously as the entertainers rearranged themselves, crowding in while the driver took this opportunity to check all three of the wheels they hadn’t replaced. The woman wore her hair tied back with a piece of red cloth, and dressed in the style of the men she traveled with, leggings and a short jacket. One would never have seen such a thing in the palace, and even then I noticed that Mamoru turned his head aside just slightly—out of deference, it would seem to any stranger, but I knew well enough it was more inspired by shyness.
“Passing through the border?”
My lord half turned, as though to ask me what course to take.
I nodded, though I did not feel entirely secure in my decision, myself.
“We are,” I told her. Then, the memory of my disagreeable temperament with previous people we’d met provoked me to add, “It’s a shame about the rain, though.”
She indicated the caravan with a nod of her head. “You’re free to ride with us, if you like. We could tie the horse to the back.”
“We wouldn’t wish to impose,” Mamoru said, though I thought that I heard a note of hope creep into his voice.
A drop of rain hit her square on her brow. The lady shook her head. “Wouldn’t have asked if it was an imposition.” She looked around for a moment, then stepped closer to our horse. “I’ve heard there’s trouble for couples crossing the border. You’d do better to ride with us. Less trouble.”
“Still,” I said, waiting for that sense of unease to creep over me, “you hardly know whether we are worthy of such a kind gesture.”
Mamoru laid a hand against my arm. She continued to regard us coolly.
“I get a sense about people, that’s all. Goro says I’m better at that than I am in the troupe.”
“We would be very grateful to accept your offer,” Mamoru said, turning to eye me from the side. “Wouldn’t we?”
“All things considered,” the young woman said. “Less trouble, like I told you.”
I smiled, beset from all sides. “I cannot see as how we can refuse now.”
“Aiko!” The driver, seemingly finished with his inspection of the wheels, was waving us over, covering his head with his arms as he did so. The rain was falling harder now.
“Just a minute!” Aiko shouted back. She turned again to us, an enigmatic smile on her face. “Are you two coming?”
I was still waiting for that sense of unease to come. It hadn’t; at least, not yet. Moreover, this was our chance—perhaps our only chance—at crossing the border without detection.
I dismounted, not waiting for my lord to hold out his hands before taking him by the waist and helping him down. Now that we’d made our decision, I didn’t want to incur any annoyance by dawdling.
Mamoru grasped my sleeve, as if to ask whether I was certain that was the best course of action. I smiled, true as I knew how to, and sent him into the caravan ahead of me while I hitched the horse up to the back of the wagon.
“Is this all right?”
My lord leaned close to whisper the question as I moved in next to him, Aiko pulling the doors shut behind us. I nodded, reaching out to clasp his forearm warmly, just to reassure him that I’d taken his words to heart. It was as my lord had spoken. There were things the both of us had needed to get off our chests before they crushed us completely. In their absence, the air between us seemed much clearer, and the distance much smaller than before.
We’d made the decision together, as brothers on the road.
Inside, the caravan was dark and crowded, the men and women sitting close together with their knees drawn up to their chests in an effort to make more space. Nearer to the front there was a man telling jokes, and the crowd around him laughed uproariously at the latest punch line.
Closer to us was a musician tuning his instrument, murmuring a few bars of a song to himself before frowning and turning the keys at the neck a minute fraction over. The instrument howled sadly, but also out of tune, the rain no doubt affecting it.
“So she says, that’s not a melon, my lord…”
“… and hair of river-silk…”
“… it’s two for the price of one!”
The next line of the musician’s song, about eyes that shone like lamplights in the gloom, was lost in the tide of laughter at the jester’s latest joke.
My lord smiled shyly, taking in the scene with wide eyes, as though he’d never seen the like. Neither had I, if it came to that. The actors brought to the palace were classically trained, and even then came only to perform. There was no interaction between them and those who worked at the palace. This was an experience entirely foreign to the pair of us, and I could only hope that my bewilderment didn’t show on my face as obviously as I felt it.
“So, where’re the two of you from?” Aiko asked after we had given our aliases, straightening the edge of her jacket as though it was the hem of a skirt.
My lord glanced at me, and I smiled, bowing my head. “We lived near the capital, before. But my sister’s taken ill, and she lives in the Honganje prefecture.” It was a lie that came far too easily to my lips. What was worse, I was glad of it.
Aiko whistled. “That’s a fair distance. You’re traveling the whole way by yourselves?”
“We didn’t hear about the trouble with the prince until it was too late to turn back,” I explained, willing my voice to betray nothing, as my hands did. “Now it seems we’ll have more trouble crossing the wall points than we thought. My…” I hesitated only the slightest moment. “… wife and I have had enough trouble with disreputable men along the way,” I explained, swallowing thickly. “With the trouble at the border—”
“He’s more impu
lsive than I knew when I married him,” Mamoru said wryly.
“Well,” Aiko pondered, stretching her arms out in front of her, not seeming to mind when she almost slapped the musician in the back of his head, “that all depends. Your wife is pretty enough that she might get through, or you might get someone with an eye that decides she looks a little too much like royalty. She does, you know,” Aiko added.
In comparison to what passed for women in nearby towns, I supposed that he did.
“Except it seems you’ve helped us quite neatly in avoiding that particular difficulty,” I pointed out, not to be contrary, but because it genuinely baffled me. Were there people going out of their way to help one another on the roads, now that they’d been made so difficult to travel? I didn’t know if I believed it. I didn’t know if my nature would allow me to.
“Like I said,” Aiko shrugged. “I get a feel for people.”
“You can get a feel for me any day, Aiko,” someone called across the caravan.
“Shut it, Goro,” she said, seeming not put out at all.
“We’re grateful,” Mamoru said, with a glance toward me. “We… my husband’s sister, her condition is very poor indeed. And they were so close when they were children. We’re not certain how long she’ll last, so we can hardly afford delays.”
“Oh,” said Aiko, raising one eyebrow as I turned to look at Mamoru in surprise.
He stared straight ahead, his expression betraying nothing but a restrained amusement around his mouth and in his eyes. He was enjoying himself. He would have done well in a traveling theatre group such as that one. I could only hope that my own surprise and amusement would not show too readily on my face.
“Yes,” I said, shaking my head sadly to remind myself that, no matter what new turns this game with my lord took, I had a terribly ill sister. “I am fortunate, however, to have a wife so caring as to make the journey with me.”
“Most would stay at home,” Aiko agreed, though there was something in her voice that suggested she was not one of them.
“Oh, not at all,” said Mamoru, taking my hand. When my lord had been very much younger, he had been vociferous in his approval of the actors who came to the palace, and more than once had declared it would be his calling in life. It pleased me to see him taking up the role with such enthusiasm, that I had been able to give him something after all, in the midst of taking so much away.