by Keira Drake
“Oh, really?” I say, dismayed. “Was it that bad?” I worked so hard, even if I only managed to drum up a sad-looking salad and supplement with toasted bread. I burnt three beautiful loaves trying to measure the heat of the stove, broke a utensil, and reduced two tomatoes to pulp before figuring out how to slice them properly. I only wanted to try my hand at hosting, so that I might offer something to my new friends.
“Well,” Takashi says, “it was a bit…vegetarian.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I haven’t got the nerve up to kill a chicken or a duck yet, and I can’t eat beef now that I work with the cows. Have you ever looked into the eyes of a cow? They’re beautiful.”
“You’re drunk,” Takashi says. “What you need is a husband—someone to teach you how to slaughter an animal quick and clean, and have it on the table in time for supper.”
Yuki groans. “The last thing she needs is a husband. She’s doing perfectly fine on her own.”
I feel Noro’s eyes on me, but when I glance at him, he looks away. I clear my throat. “Yes,” I say. “I’m just fine, now that I can put a kettle on and feed myself properly.”
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Takashi says. “I’ll marry you, if you can’t find anyone else. I figure you might have a hard time matching up, with your hair all yellow, and your skin so white and pale.”
I am aghast. “My hair,” I say, “is not yellow.”
“Go find a wife up north,” Yuki says. “Leave our sweet Vaela out of it.”
“I’ve tried,” says Takashi miserably. “All the good ones are taken.”
“It is not yellow,” I repeat, scowling. Yuki tries to take my glass of wine, but I slide it out of her reach. “It is blonde.”
“It looks yellow to me,” Takashi says, and promptly buries his face in his arms atop the table. Half a moment later, he is snoring.
“What do you think, then?” Noro asks quietly. “Is Takashi Yen what you seek?”
“I seek nothing,” I say, “except manure. It is the focus of my life. I find it, I shovel it, and I have oka in my pocket.”
“And wine in your belly!” Yuki says, eyeing my glass. “Want me to take that for you?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
She sighs, then stands up and pokes Takashi in the side. “Get up, get up. It’s the couch for you tonight.” He lifts his head, a thin stream of drool gleaming on the left side of his chin. Yuki helps him up, rolls her eyes, and walks him to the sofa. I hear them talking softly to one another as she searches through the cupboard for a blanket.
I feel suddenly uncertain of myself, left alone with Noro. My head is swimming with wine, and the only solution seems to be to drink more, but I know that can’t be wise. I push my glass to the center of the table.
“So,” I say. “Takashi is a bit of a disaster.”
“No wedding plans, then?” Noro says, those calm, steady eyes of his fixed on mine. He’s hardly touched his glass, which makes me feel all the more drunk and self-conscious.
I laugh. “Takashi…he is very likable, but I think we would not be well suited.”
“And why not?”
“He’s not my type.”
“Your ‘type’?”
“Well, yes. You know. The sort of person I’m attracted to.”
Noro’s eyes are like two black flames, burning through me. “What sort of person is that?”
I hesitate, frozen, my heart inexplicably thumping in my chest. I have words, somewhere, but can’t seem to conjure them—I can hardly breathe, much less speak.
Yuki leans through the kitchen entrance. “The sort who knows when to go home,” she says. “Off with you, Noro Zensuke.”
He looks at me for a moment longer, and I feel a fluttering inside that I can no longer ignore. A little flutter that’s been happening for a while now, if I am honest.
Noro, it would seem, is exactly, perfectly my type.
The following morning, Takashi is gone, but I find Yuki curled up with a book in the sitting room. She sets it aside when she sees me, then throws her head back and laughs.
“Oh, Vaela!” she says. “You look even worse than I expected. No more wine after dinner for you.”
I close my eyes and rub my temples. “If I never see another bottle, it will be too soon.”
“I have the perfect remedy,” she says. “Come along.”
Her eyes are clear, and she seems completely unaffected by the previous night’s indulgences, though I know she drank nearly twice as much as I did. I follow her into the kitchen and sit at the table while she rummages around in the pantry cupboard.
The noise of bottles and packages clinking about is terrible. I’ve never had more than a single glass of wine at once, though we drank it nightly in the Spire. It’s meant to complement a meal; why would anyone want to make herself sick? My head is swimming.
“Vaela,” Yuki says, too loudly, “do you honestly not have even a pinch of salt in the house?”
I give her a queasy smile. “I’m afraid I don’t care much for salt, except in preserved meats and the like.”
She stares at me with her mouth open, then shuts the pantry door with a loud clack. I wince.
“Don’t care much for salt…well. I suppose you’ve never had a salted egg, then?” I shake my head. “Well. Now I’ve heard everything.”
“Yuki?”
“Yes?”
“My mouth tastes like dirty cotton.”
“Yes, well, that’s what happens when you drink too much wine.”
“You had your share!”
“Yes,” she says, leaning against the table, “but I am an old widow, and have far more practice than you.”
“You’re seventeen.”
“Shush.”
I draw my knees up to my chest. “I noticed Noro didn’t drink much.”
“Oooh,” she says, and hurries to sit in the chair opposite. “I was waiting for his name to come up. You’re sweet on each other, right?”
I turn to face her, my cheeks growing warm. “We’re friends.”
She laughs. “Right. Well, here’s how it works,” she says, leaning forward. “Half the girls—and some of the older women—in this village have their sights set on Noro. But Noro isn’t really what they want.”
“He’s not?”
“No. They see the handsome itzatsune, the adept warrior. Noro is easy on the eyes and, truly, there are few more skilled than he—but the assassins rarely wed. They are encouraged to be alone.”
“But…surely not all of them…”
Yuki cackles. “I had you pegged your first week in the cottage.” She widens her eyes in imitation of me, and says, in a singsong voice, “‘Yuki, do you know how long Noro usually stays away? Yuki, do you have any romantic books I might borrow? Yuki, I thought we might bake a loaf of bread for the Zensuke boys.’”
“He’s my friend,” I say stubbornly. “He’s helping me adjust to life in the village.”
“I’m helping you adjust to life in the village. Noro is… what is Noro doing?” She chews on the tip of her finger, then points it at me. “Watch yourself, little Vaela—there are at least four archers, a swordswoman, and one itzatsune who have eyes on him.”
I look up, my eyes wide. “You don’t really think—”
Yuki erupts into giggles. “You needn’t lock your doors just yet. But I can’t imagine you’ll be too popular if I’m right about you and Noro.”
“You’re wrong about Noro,” I insist, “and I’m already unpopular. Most of the villagers look at me like I have two heads. And two of every three traders won’t sell to me.”
“The Aven’ei are wary of the unknown,” she says.
“I am only a girl—one who can barely use a knife on a loaf of bread! What do they fear?”
“You are one of an entire nation of others, Vaela—the outworlders who sailed away and left our people to the fate we carry now. The villagers do not trust you. They think you are a harbinger of the end.”
“O
h, only that?” I say, and Yuki laughs.
“You do need to get acquainted with more than a butter knife at some point. You know this, right?”
I stiffen, and my head throbs involuntarily. “I really would prefer not to have a weapon in the house.”
“A weapon in the—” Yuki gapes at me. “You need a weapon on your person, Vaela Sun, at all times. Do you think you are still in the Nations Beyond, where life is about maps and savory foods and servants to pluck the chickens?”
“The Spire was not devoid of danger. There was crime, as I told you.”
“Take my point, Vaela, and do not change the subject.”
“The Topi do not venture into this region,” I say. “I have heard it said many times.”
“‘Every day is new,’” she quotes, “‘and in its corners dwell dangers yet unseen.’”
“That’s very encouraging, thank you.”
“Get a weapon.”
“I’ll think about it.”
She gets up, strides over to the copper basin, which I use to clean my clothes and dishes, and begins to bang on it with a wooden spoon. “Get a weapon.”
I cover my ears, the clang clang clang of the pot reverberating in my head. “Yuki! Stop!”
“Get a weapon,” she calls, over the clatter of wood and metal.
“All right, all right,” I say. “I’ll buy a broadsword if it pleases you. Only stop with the noise.”
She sets the spoon back in the basin and smiles.
“You will learn, friend, that I rarely speak out of turn, and I don’t waste words. When I tell you to buy a weapon, it is because that is what you must do. When I tell you that wine is not a particular friend of yours, you must believe me. And when I tell you that there is something going on between you and Noro, you must remember that I have said so.” She leans back and gives me a smug smile. “I am never wrong.”
CHAPTER 19
ONE FINE AFTERNOON IN LATE SPRING, I AM SITTING in my garden with a book when Keiji—who has been rolling marbles around in the dirt for half an hour and complaining that he is bored—asks me to play kiko with him. It’s a game of ringtoss, similar to horseshoes, but with a simpler scoring method: one point for each ring to encircle the peg, two extra points if you can land—or kiko—all five of your rings.
“I don’t know, Keiji,” I say, absorbed in my book.
“Come on, Vaela.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Two fingers appear over the top of the page, and the book vanishes. “Come on, Vaela,” he says again. “It’ll be fun.”
“What will be fun?” asks Noro, stepping through the doorway onto the small patio. He’s been in Hayato for a full week now, but I suspect the council will send him out again before too long. Normally, scouts would first be deployed to seek out any Topi who have crossed into the territory, then the itzatsune would be dispatched as required. But as of late, with so many enemy sightings, the assassins must also play the role of scout. This is how Noro found me; he was patrolling the area south of the mountains.
“Kiko,” Keiji says. “But you’re not invited to play.” He turns to me and makes a face. “He always wins.”
“That’s all right,” Noro says, sitting down beside me. “I’ll just watch.”
“You can go first,” Keiji says. “But stay behind the line. No cheating.”
I sigh and hold out my hand for the rings. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
I step behind the charcoal line he has drawn on the patio and hold one of the rings close to my chest. “All right, here I go.” I toss the first one, which nicks the peg, but does not encompass it.
“Not bad,” Noro says.
“Shhh,” Keiji says. “No talking.”
I exchange a smile with Noro and turn back to the peg. I concentrate this time. My second ring goes firmly round the peg, as does the third. “Look!” I say, excited, and turn around to see Noro and Keiji each wearing a look of suspicion on his face. I feel immediately deflated. “What is it? I was behind the line, I did it just as Keiji always does.”
“Throw the rest of them,” Keiji says, all business.
I face the kiko pitch, slightly insulted and more than a bit determined to put my last two rings on the peg. The first one is wide, and I feel my cheeks burning. Five minutes ago, I didn’t care one whit about this game. But the fact that Noro and Keiji apparently expected me to do poorly has more than gotten my ire up. I take a deep breath, hold the ring out before me, and toss it cleanly onto the peg.
I cross my arms, a satisfied smile upon my face. “How’s that then?”
Noro collects the rings and hands them back to me. “Three out of five, and a fourth nearly. Do it again, girl.”
“It’s Keiji’s turn!” I say.
“Go again, Vaela,” Keiji says.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I say, but I move behind the line once again. This time, four out of five land neatly around the kiko peg. I turn back to the brothers and raise an eyebrow.
Keiji gives me a little bow and I laugh.
“That’s very well done,” Noro says. “Stay here.”
He turns and disappears into the house, and I look at Keiji in confusion. He shrugs and gathers up the rings, ready to take a turn. He lands two of five, leaves all where they fell, and goes back to his game of marbles.
Noro returns with a wooden block under one arm and a roll of black leather under the other—I recognize the bundle immediately as the case he uses to store his knives. Understanding dawns on me and I say, “Oh, no, I’m not throwing those.”
He ignores me and tosses the block to Keiji, who sets it up. I’ve seen them both practice before, and it makes me uneasy whenever they do it—I haven’t forgotten about the Topi warriors killed by those same knives.
Keiji collects the rings from the dirt, then positions the block on top of a stool at the edge of the yard, near the makeshift kiko pitch. Noro unrolls the bundle atop my little table and slides one of the knives from its place.
“Did you not hear me?” I say. “I don’t want to throw your knives, Noro.”
He sets the knife down. “Go and wait for me at home, Keiji.”
I can see in Keiji’s face that he wants to protest, but he rarely—if ever—disobeys his brother. He trudges into the house without a word and closes the door behind him.
Noro turns back to me. “I only want to see if you have an aptitude, girl. Let us see what you can do.”
I shake my head. “The game is one thing—these are another. I know what these are meant for. And I know what they have done.”
“Forget what they have done,” he says, looking down at me in that clear, steady way of his, “and forget what they might do. Simply throw.”
If it were anyone else, I would insist upon withdrawing to the house and taking up a more pleasant way to pass the time. But Noro has a way with me, because I trust him implicitly. And I can hear Yuki’s voice in my head: get a weapon. Perhaps this could be a tiny, tiny step in that direction. I take the knife and move once more to the charcoal line.
I pinch the handle between my fingertips and aim for the block. “No, not like that,” Noro says, and moves in to correct me. Carefully, he slides my fingers to the blade. “Hold from here, and let go as you extend your arm. Watch me.”
He takes a knife for himself and stands beside me. “Like this,” he says, and the blade moves from his fingers to a knothole in the block in one deft movement.
I start to protest, to explain that I can’t possibly do what he has just done, but he nods toward the wooden block and extends his arm in example once more.
I hold the blade between my fingers and bend my elbow as Noro did, the haft resting against my shoulder. I exhale through pursed lips, then fling the knife forward. It misses the block completely and skitters across the paving stones. “You see?” I say, flustered.
Noro smiles. “Patience, girl. Watch.” He demonstrates the correct motion again, slowly this time. Then he moves behind me and takes my wrist, br
inging it back and then forward again. I feel his breath upon my neck, and I flush at his nearness. “Try again,” he says, his words dancing across my skin as he places another knife in my hands. “See its path—look only at the target—and let go.”
He steps back, and I try once more. The blade sticks firmly in the wood, about an inch or so from the bottom—probably six inches from the knothole, but who cares? I wheel around, my eyes wide with excitement. “Did you see?”
“I saw,” he says softly. But he is not looking at the knife. His gaze is fixed on me, and something in his expression sets my heart beating faster. This is the way I want him to look at me.
“Noro?” I say, the knives forgotten. “What is it?”
He reaches for my hands and pulls me close to him. “When first we met, you were a frightened thing, robbed of all you had known and loved. You were broken, lost, then stolen by grief as you recovered in the healing room. You have come back to life, girl—I can see it in your eyes. I have watched you carve a way out of the darkness, even as the Continent thrust you into a life you did not plan, one you have embraced at each turn with courage and grace.” He smiles. “And now, I see you, girl. Alive. Brave. It is a beautiful thing.”
I cannot think what to say to this, but it is no matter. Half a moment later, Noro’s fingers gently brush my cheek, and his lips find mine.
It is strange what becomes clear when a small thing changes us forever. What we have counted as merely ordinary takes on new meaning when viewed with the certainty of hindsight. For me, this has never been more true: with something so small as a kiss, Noro has opened my eyes.
In my grief, in my weakness, he was there from the beginning. I was drawn to his strength, but he did not want for me to rely upon him—what he wanted most of all was for me to come into a strength of my own. I see this now, by his absence when I grieved at Eno’s, by his friendship over the past two months, by the look in his beautiful dark eyes in the moment before he kissed me. There has been no grand process involving a declaration of intention, no series of parties and family gatherings. Our courtship began long ago, with the kindness of Noro’s heart. This is all so different than the stilted, regulated romantic traditions of the Spire. The path to love has been completely unfettered by formality; Noro simply waited for me to come back to myself, and when I did, he allowed himself to love me.