Their lord, however, had other business.
Saga had blurted the words as swiftly as he could, perhaps too swiftly judging by the confusion on Amé and Tomuchi’s faces. But no. No, the grim satisfaction came upon Tomuchi like a dawn, and Amé’s expression ran from shock to fury, to a final wryness as she realized the thrust of Saga’s plan. She mouthed a curse. Saga dipped his head in the only bow he could manage. When he looked again, it was war.
Tomuchi flung himself upon her without hesitation, stabbing his knife and grasping for the Rope with clumsy abandon. The room was thick with samurai, refugees from outside adding to the press. Ai no ko, most of them. Mongrels of the between, like Saga. Men of a loyalty most staunch. And at Tomuchi’s assault there were no less than a dozen who charged to his aid.
Amé saw the odds. She gave a signal and a shout, her lone voice swallowed in the eruption of voices. The akunin maid loosed a flash arrow that sang the air in a streak across the room and struck a lamp behind Tomuchi’s soldiers, exploding it to pieces. Men screamed with burns and bloody wounds. All was made stark in the white of the flash of light. But only for an instant. For the flash died and the corner went dark, darkness swallowing the troop, darkness breeding death as the swarm boiled in.
A second arrow and a second blast and now half the room was in shadow, beneath the smoke and the debris and in the crooked places of the corpses, shadows forming darkling roads for the wasps to steal along, questing for Marrow’s box.
(Come! Come! Come!) The box jolted.
As the samurai were engulfed and stung, Saga scrambled free, stumbling deeper into the surviving light with hot pain throbbing from toe to skull. The air tasted tart from the smashed lanterns’ tang. The falls of venom-sick men shook the floor.
Grunts and the keen of steel and Saga spied the akunin maid dueling a pair of samurai. The last of the samurai, he realized: a man he couldn’t recognize from the blood on his face, and Uji. And they were getting the best of her. They stalked and clashed, exhaustion making them wild, all three yet careful to tread in the safety of the remaining lamps.
But the true battle was nearer at hand. Tomuchi, ears bloody, resplendent haori twisted and torn, grappled with Amé. He stabbed with his knife. She struck with hers. Faces swollen. Jaws clenched in rictus fury. Each wrapping and tugging and cinching greedily at the Knotted Rope.
Suddenly Amé fell back clutching a gash in her brow and Tomuchi scrambled clear. He clawed at the Rope with his enfeebled hands and bit the First Knot with his teeth and availed nothing. But the lord at last turned his back to Saga, to the room, and bent himself over the heat of his brazier. From the litter on the floor he grasped a porcelain bottle and upended the strong-smelling liniment over the coals. A flash of fire shot toward the ceiling.
Protect Kagehana, the Rope commanded as they fought. Saga held himself still. Protect yourself, the Knots roared, live for Kagehana! as they burned. He refused. And with its terrible swiftness the panic-tide struck. His heart leapt so tightly he gasped. He doubled over, shuddering. His pulse was a liquid thunder in his ears, red mist tunneling his vision. But he forced his eyes to work, forced them to watch, for he had to live long enough to see this bit of himself burn. Had to see, for it to be real.
Even Marrow knew they were close, his swarm all a frenzy.
Amé scrambled to her feet, shoved Tomuchi aside, and snatched the rope from the flame. She reeled as if struck. Her bloodshot eyes met Tomuchi’s. And the reality of what the two of them had done descended upon them both.
Amé spun and shouted, “Saga! I can help you!”
Tomuchi glared, panting.
But where the first knot had ruled, all coil and sinuous command, was nothing but a smoking ashen twist. Obey Kagehana was gone, and without it the rest meant nothing: Saga was no longer akunin. He was no longer samurai. The rope was no longer Kagehana’s. It was his.
His heart settled sane. His lungs gave him breath. He struggled to his feet. He dashed for the lamps.
Amé was quickest. She threw down the rope and lit her flare and sprinted off through a hole in the wall, hunched low in lee of her light. Dimly Saga felt the swarm chasing her into the distance. Dimly did he notice, for he reached the first lamp and felled it with a shove. Tilt and crash and puff and flame, its light vanished in foul air, throwing another corner of the room into shadow. The swarm gleefully tore at the last of the walls, flinging wood in a storm of splintered madness.
Now there was but one lamp, the sphere of its glow a tumor recessed in darkness. And there under the tantalizing circle of light was Marrow’s box.
Saga left a smear of himself with every step of his four-toed foot. He passed a tangle of corpses. The akunin maid, outmaneuvered and cornered, had won her fight in an akunin way: she and Uji and the other man all in a heap, all with hair burnt, all with skin steaming as the houmatsuteki na fukumen powder melted them like tar. Saga watched Uji’s untamable mustache disappear with a terrible stench into the puddle of his face, and somewhere, like a strain within the swarm, a mass of Marrow’s wasps shuddered in mourning for the Funny-Friend.
But Saga put it out of mind. For the lamp was his fixation. The lamp was the end. He limped onward, single-minded, and was caught unbalanced when a hand wrenched his foot and sent him sprawling just short of his prize.
Tomuchi, the crippled lord, the iron-hearted friend of the True Emperor in the Southern Court, dragging himself by arm-power and wrath, took another hold of Saga’s foot and smashed it to the floor. Saga howled, folded, reached for the pain, and writhing thus, gave Tomuchi the chance to clamber upon his back and loop the knotted rope around his throat.
Saga clawed at the garrote as its bite sank in, his breath suffering another prison of Kagehana’s conscience.
“Stubborn ox,” Tomuchi hissed between the creak of his teeth. The lord’s own breath quavered and his knuckles wept pus. But the strength in his arms was steel-cord over iron. “You earned this.”
Saga’s face pulsed hot. Tears ran salty past his jaw where the work of the rope cut an aching gouge, blood welling sudden and thick from a torn vein. He could feel the swarm fighting against the intensity of the light, dying short of the box, dying short of the lamp, their numbers thinning fast. They flung stones and detritus and torn corpses—a body thudding to the floor and sliding just near Saga. But the lamp did little more than rock and tilt, and its wobbling drove the surviving wasps mad with frustration.
(Hurry!) urged Marrow. (Brother-Anchor is dying!)
Shut up! Saga snapped in his mind. He knew what was important to keep. And what could be tossed away.
With his vision failing he tried thrice before his fingers found purchase against a warp in the broken floor. He pulled. Tomuchi flopped against the shift in weight, wrenching Saga’s throat. Saga’s other hand found purchase and he pulled once more.
“No!” Tomuchi roared.
Saga pulled.
“No!”
But it was too late. The lamp’s iron strut was in Saga’s grasp. Marrow was ebullient in his heart. And with the greatest joy he’d ever known, he strained against the weight of the lamp and brought it down, heavily down, down crashing upon his own breast.
Fire scorched his eyes.
Sound drowned in Tomuchi’s scream.
The Ink boiled free.
* * *
The Majestic Plural
King!
King of Himself!
King of the Night!
King of Where-He-Goes!
He kicks aside the ugly box and dashes out of the room through a hole in the broken wall with his children swarming behind him like a slow-man’s cloak, his children giving him strength, one by one, stinging him and shuddering and passing his life back to him, making him strong again, making him Marrow again....
Ignores the Tomuchi building because it’s smashed down, leaps instead to another roof and dances a king’s dance and howls down for the slow creatures below to feel in their bones, feel and know and fear, then w
ith joy pulsing in thrills through his arms, making them full-heavy-strong, he smashes with both fists and crashes down through the building and kicks apart the walls and finds rice in a pot and swallows it and spits out the water as steam, whistle-sizzle-pop, and paints the starch across a cracked table so that slow-men will come and awe and see his freedom, and stamping backwards across the shattered wood he dances out into the open air and sings to distant owls and snatches wing-powder from the moths and throws blades of grass into the wind and chases their whirling crazy race and, and, and....
Sees the dead bodies....
Marrow stops and crouches, because he knows it’s Kemu there crushed beneath the big stones because of the red charm Kemu wears on his wrist, and knows Kemu shares his food and makes up rhymes about the sea and peaches and money, and Marrow knows Kemu is dead, and that makes Marrow cold....
But the place that Brother-Anchor made, the hard place in Marrow’s belly to put the sorrow and hurt and hate, is gone, and so the coldness runs in streams from his breast to his toes, too cold, too free, too much....
He doesn’t like it, stands and runs away from broken Kemu, but goes only a short way along a hard flat path and sees Arimaki tangled with another slow-man in the prickly clutch of a bush, and Goki—whose topknot is gray-white and whose skin is covered in tiny and wet and messy holes—lying on the other side of the path, and Hatabachi there limp beside the fallen torch, and Meko’s head over against a fence a long way from Meko’s body and Marrow feels full of cold for the slow-men he knows because they’re dead and their company is gone and their fun is gone, and he hates the cold, flooding more and more under his skin, hates it, can’t get away from it, no matter how fast he runs....
Sprints through the mists by the earth-water pools, dodging more bodies and more burning torches and more bodies and more bodies and torches, and rounds back to the Tomuchi building, because here in the crushed room with Brother-Anchor are the last of the stung-men, now becoming owned-men....
Go, he tells them as he folds small and crouches next to Brother-Anchor, his children blanketing his shoulders and head, go make the mourn-fires like Brother-Anchor makes....
And the owned-men rise to their feet and run in the way Marrow orders, to gather up the bodies and the body parts from the stink pools, the bushes, the crushed buildings, and lay them in the wide yard where Sleepy-Eyed Gozen’s blood still stinks in the grass, and they use the wood they find and the oil they find and they light the fire over the bodies, huge, hungry, roaring....
Marrow and Brother-Anchor watch the burning through the owned-men’s eyes, but they know the owned-men too make the deep-cold churn, and so Marrow says go, and the owned-men go, into the mourn-fire where they burn with their sad, dead, gone Tomuchi-brothers....
The slow-flesh becomes sizzling fat and bone and ash and smoke on the wind, and Marrow knows that other Tomuchi-brothers have fled into the cool musk embrace of the forest and wants to follow them, wants to see if they are slow-men he likes, but the cold isn’t gone yet, not all the way, so he wants more to be here with Brother-Anchor and be still and comfortable, and pick at the twist of the grain of the wood of the broken room....
“It’s almost dawn,” Brother-Anchor says—strong in the mind, weak in breath, because Brother-Anchor is dying....
“This is good,” Brother-Anchor tells Marrow about the ruin of his body, “just like the children and the owned-men. Better.” He shows Marrow in thoughts where the slow-flesh is weak—the dying blood, the dying twitch of the nerves—and how as it dies it’s like a seed for Marrow to use. “Come, make it yours.”
And Marrow does, owns the body and breaks it into pieces and energy, but.... But Brother-Anchor’s thoughts, Saga’s thoughts, are with him now. Saga and Marrow. They are touching for the first time, one for the first time, and they draw together like they’ve dreamed, rebuilding the body to be a home, better than the seed. They pull energy from the children and reassemble meat to close the gap of their missing toe. They dissipate the bruises. They seal the cuts. They leave well-knit scars, better sinew, harmonious organs and tempered bone. As they right the damage at the throat where the severed veins nearly killed them, they consider the rope, lodged there in the flesh, and decide to channel the last of the children into its coils, for the rope is as much a part of them as any.
By dawn the work is done. Saga is whole and Saga is king. And pleased in the comfort of their being, they rest.
* * *
They wake to warm sunlight and the clatter of Tomuchi’s suicide.
The room is a mess, stale smoke and dust and wood beams slanting from broken walls, at angles to the lean of the sun rays. They guess the hour—not long after daybreak by the look—and watch the samurai lord fumble with his knife.
Tomuchi’s hands are slick with pus and blood and he drops the knife once more. He sees them. “I have an audience,” he mutters with a shudder of humor. Or agony.
Across Saga’s chest the iron lamp still presses down and its weight is becoming vexing. They shove it away, freeing both themselves and Tomuchi lying beside them. Tomuchi coughs blood. “Help me,” he manages.
They ignore him and stand and stretch their new limbs. They extend Saga’s new four-toed foot into a ray of sunlight and shed tears at the play of warmth on their skin. It feels good. Truly. Laughter bursts from their lips.
“Help me with the knife,” Tomuchi says.
They turn their attention to the rope, once an engine of fibers and law, now an extension of their being, vital energy flowing through it like a magnificent new arm. The knots are gone, untied in its remaking, and they know every weave as they know their own breath. They whip it through the air with a crack, make it stiff as a pole, and with a flick send it coiling from wrist to shoulder with all the comfort of a tailored garment. Chuckling, they let it fall into loops and sit down.
“Can you hear me!” Tomuchi screams, his voice edged in hysteria.
“We can,” they say. They touch the rope and release it. Touch it and release it. Enjoying the flow of vitality.
Tomuchi flops and struggles and turns to face them fully. His throat and jaw are burned, char-black and slick, the wound grievous enough to drown him pain. But with his usual samurai nerve he holds fast to his wits and eyes them in contempt and wonder, or some other emotions made muddled by the missing flesh. “We?”
This gives them pause. They were distinct once, ghost and mind, this they understand. But they cleaved that distinction, and now they are just Saga. Saga the We. Saga the I. “Kings can be both,” they say—he says—aloud.
“Kings can...?” Tomuchi studies him with new wariness.
The gaze is annoying and Saga meets it with his own, ire brimming in his eyes and sharpening the world until Tomuchi appears a quivering slab of bloody meat and heat and bones easy, with the right blow, to break.
The lord quails and looks away. “There is black in your eyes.”
“Ehh,” says Saga. His irritation cools. “But no need to worry. I won’t kill you. And I won’t help you kill yourself,” he adds with a twist of his mouth.
“Why?” comes the hoarse question.
Saga shrugs. “Because I like you.”
“Then help me.” Tomuchi drags himself closer. “There are liniments here. Salves. Bandages. Treat my—”
Saga cuts the man off, sad at his delusion. “That would be a waste of time.”
Tomuchi’s hope curdles into fury. But he’s used the last of his strength and he collapses to his back, breath coming fast and shallow. “The peasant bitch wins,” he says through his teeth.
“She escaped,” Saga admits. “But she’ll see me soon enough.”
This piques Tomuchi. “Will you destroy her?”
“Probably not.” Saga stiffens one end of the rope and flings it like a harpoon, thunk into a wooden beam. A flick of his wrist brings it back and a hunk of the beam besides. “I like her more than I like you.”
“And the Denrai? How do they stand in your a
ffections?”
Saga mulls the idea. “They’re smug bastards. They think me dirty.” He smiles. “I’ll put my foot in Denrai’s anus for you, samurai Tomuchi. It will be fun.”
The lord matches the smile with a ghastly version of his own. But it soon fades. “I’m sorry,” he says, gesturing at the mess. “For all of this.”
“I’m not.”
“No. No, I do not suppose you would be.” Tomuchi lets go a long shuddering exhale. “What will you do?” he asks faintly. “After Amé. After the Denrai.”
Saga pauses, his new imagination amok with barbarian women and the spice of strange breezes, the stretch of the sea and city riches and wilderness unexplored. He is beset by ten thousand possibilities, and a fear of that vastness strikes him hot in his bowel. It’s a beautiful fear. The best fear in the world. “Whatever I want,” he decides.
He idly makes his rope dance and spends the morning in nostalgia with Tomuchi, laughing about the men they’ve known, bemoaning the malevolence of summer, reliving old battles. When the end comes, Saga holds Tomuchi’s arms to ease the wracking shudders. The lord doesn’t seem to notice. His last expression is an angry one.
Saga thinks of saying goodbye, but the body without breath is only slow dust. So he dries his eyes and coils the rope around his arm. He sets the fire, orange tongues lascivious over books and bandages and splintered wood, and watches it become a cremation.
Watches only for a moment. For when the smoke begins to sting, he turns his back and steps outside. He tests the wind and chooses a direction and sets off walking, breathing in the day, a king alone. He keeps his own pace.
Copyright © 2011 Michael Anthony Ashley
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Michael Anthony Ashley is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. He lives in Atlanta, GA, with his family, where he writes short stories and sandbox fiction.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies #82 Page 4