by Jaida Jones
Then, we rode.
The farther we went, the more I was certain we were straying farther still from any path I’d ever known. I felt as though I were running away because I very much was, but the loneliness I felt beyond that was not simply due to all I had lost: It was due also to all I didn’t know. Even the trees were unfamiliar to me, and I began to realize that I would evermore be the stranger.
“Where do you think we’ll go?” I asked, loud enough to distract myself from my thoughts. I was sorry for it when the birds above us in the tree branches flapped their wings, a few of them even taking sudden flight.
Kouje didn’t admonish me, though I thought perhaps he should have. His silence told me everything.
After a little while, however, he did speak. “We’ll travel as far away as we can from the palace,” he said, his words more quiet and more circumspect than mine had been. I was glad to listen to him talk; if only he were a man better suited for idle conversation. “It takes us a considerable distance out of the way, but…” He paused for a moment, listening to something deeper in the woods, then relaxed. I would have to do my best to distract him from his own worries, I realized—even if I was able only to chatter on foolishly about the weather. He was tense as a drawn bow behind me. “I’d thought to take you to a small fishing village near the mountains,” he concluded at last. “I should have consulted you, but it seemed the best plan last night.”
“It’s better than hiding in the mountains with the tricksters and the foxes,” I pointed out.
“I suppose that was my thinking yesterday,” Kouje agreed.
The horse’s hooves beat out an inexorable rhythm beneath us. I couldn’t bear to listen to it, the amiable beast bearing me toward an unnamed elsewhere. I pressed on through the thicket of conversation for that reason alone. “This fishing village,” I said. “How do you know of it?”
“My sister married a fisherman,” Kouje said, after a long, taciturn pause. “She lives there. It would… be something, for a time.”
I harbored a momentary warmth. “Have you been there before?”
“Never had time,” he admitted. “But I do know where it is, well enough, at least, to find it.”
“Will we… will we stay there, do you think?”
A mosquito buzzed by my ear, and a moment later sang at the horse. He whinnied unhappily, flicked his tail once or twice, and Kouje reined him in, guiding him in a sudden, sharp turn left. We were going west if we were to draw close to the mountains.
The mountains were where Iseul had fought; I’d been beside him in battle once, but they were foreign and remote to me, the distant and jagged symbol of separation. Men who fought in the mountains came back changed, and only on a very clear summer’s day could you even see the top of the range from the palace. They were like the great wall of an old tale, a boundary marked out by nature. My people knew them better than the soldiers of Volstov, but I myself had no knowledge of them, although some nights, when I was much younger, I would dream of being caught in the mazes that wound their way through the rock—trapped, as Iseul once described it to me, by the shifting of ancient stone.
I wondered how anyone could dwell near the mountains without living each day in their massive shadow terrified some change in the earth or breath from the gods would send them crashing down.
“I wouldn’t know how long we could,” Kouje said. “I’ve no idea how to catch fish for a living. Besides, just think of the smell.”
It took me a moment to realize he was teasing me. I hid my laugh against my rough cotton sleeve—an affectation of the court and one I’d have to shake off as well, though it seemed more than awkward to laugh into my palms. Besides which, the latter barely muffled the sound properly.
After that, we rode comfortably enough. Kouje pointed small things out to me along the way to keep us talking—such as the osmanthus trees that grew in a scattered fashion among the hardier trees, and bloomed delicate clusters of white flowers against evergreen leaves. When a bird cawed above us we would play a game to guess which type of bird it was, or if there was a rustle in the bushes that frightened us we’d guess as to whether it was a rabbit or a fox, and so on.
When we stopped at last to give the horse some rest and stretch our stiff legs, I no longer had any idea where we were, nor any idea how Kouje knew.
“How can you follow the sun under so many trees?” I asked him.
“I’ll teach you,” he said, and I agreed. After all, we had the time.
We mounted once again after no more than a brief respite and began the jostling trip anew.
It was senseless, mindless, numbing; we traveled toward a destination I’d only just begun to envision, and one which was farther away than even imagination could calculate. I wondered what the little houses looked like, if they were made of wood or straw or clay, and how the people dressed. I’d never seen a fisherman or, for that matter, a fisherwoman.
When it began to grow dark, the mosquitoes swarmed around us in earnest—whirlwinds of them that whined and stung. Kouje waved them away as best he could while I told the beginnings of the story of the monkey god and his quest to find the setting sun. We, too, were traveling west, and the story was one of Kouje’s favorites.
At last, when it was dark enough that the owls were hooting and my stomach was cramped with hunger, we stopped again by a stream where the sound of running water drowned out the cries of the night birds. Kouje led the horse to drink.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. I sensed that he was not.
“I ate very well at breakfast,” I replied, resting a hand over my stomach in the darkness to quiet it. If I said I was hungry, then Kouje would never have thought twice before he went chasing noises through the shadowy bushes. It was better if we both slept now and ate after the sun rose. “I believe I’m able to manage until morning.”
Whether Kouje believed my lie fully or not, he didn’t press the matter. I lay awake for a long time after that, hearing an errant mosquito flit past my cheek now and then, listening to the water flow over the rocks and to my stomach growling.
For the second time, I woke to find Kouje gone.
Cursing myself, I washed my face in the stream and drank from it, then washed the dust-coated hem of my stolen maid’s costume. There was dust between my toes, so I washed my feet, as well, and did what I could to clean the dirt from under my fingernails.
When Kouje returned, again with rabbits, my own shame was momentarily silenced by my hunger. Matters were less complicated in the woods. I didn’t apologize until after we both ate.
“Next time, you must wake me,” I said, helping him to destroy the site of the fire. “It isn’t a command, Kouje, it’s… it’s a request.”
Kouje looked at me as though the word was something entirely foreign to him. Perhaps it was. Then he bowed his head, but the gesture was more a concession than a display of worship. It would have to suffice, for now.
“My lord—” He stopped himself, looking frustrated and ashamed in equal measures. “Mamoru. I believe we might be best served at passing through one of the villages. We’re far enough away now that there is little chance of being caught out; littler chance still of being recognized. We might barter for better shoes for you there and… if there is any news from the palace, I would like to hear it. Thankfully gossip has more foot soldiers than your brother.”
I twined my fingers together tightly in my lap, doing my best not to betray any weakness at the suggestion of news. It was cowardly of me not to want to know anything, and to want to forget the capital existed at all, now that we’d left it.
Kouje seemed to sense my discomfort, for he stretched a hand across the distance between us and rested it against my shoulder. “We will not listen to idle gossip,” he told me. “I would not suggest we listen at all, except that… if there is any way to know how the Emperor plans to hunt us, I would like not to be caught unawares.”
Of course. I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it, though I nodded, and ho
ped that it might be enough. I could not help my loneliness, could not help feeling as though I were being left behind somehow. Kouje was adapting to the situation much more quickly than I could hope to.
I would have to work twice as hard, I vowed, so as not to become a burden on him.
This time, when Kouje set to work dismantling the rest of our crude camp, I helped him. We dragged branches across the earth to hide where we’d slept and tossed the stones of our fire pit into the stream where I’d washed my hands and face. Kouje patted the horse down, then we were away once more. I felt the beginnings of a lingering ache in my backside, the result of near-ceaseless riding, and pushed it to the back of my mind. I would not admit such weakness, when I did not know how far off our destination was. For Kouje to think it safe, it would have to be a great distance from here, which meant a great deal more riding.
“Will your sister teach me to fish?” I asked, when the birds had fallen silent and we had no more games to fill the time.
I felt Kouje’s laugh more than I heard it behind me. “After she teaches me, perhaps.”
I tried to imagine what it would be like. It wouldn’t be like the stories, I knew that. There would be no giant peaches to fish from the ocean, no life-changing fortune sent to benefit the hardworking fishermen, since we would be fishermen in counterfeit only. It would have to be for the joy of fishing that we worked, then, and not for the hope of anything greater. We would rise early in the morning, perhaps, when a gray fog still clung to the ocean and the sun was merely a promise on the horizon. Then we would get into our little boat, and—Kouje’s sister having told us all the best fishing spots—we would go to our very favorite of them all, casting our hooks and nets for bonito and flounder. We might well spend all day long underneath the sun, out on the water, waiting for the fish to come. By then, Kouje would have learned to speak easier, and we would talk about whatever came into our heads until the fish drew our attention by tugging at the nets. Perhaps, on very good days, we would come back with eel, and Kouje’s sister would say that we were naturals at it.
Was that a life that Kouje could be content with? Was it a life that I could be content with?
I didn’t know the answer to that, yet. But I was determined to find out.
“Is there a village near here?” I asked idly, tucking hair behind my ear.
“The last time I came this way, there was,” Kouje replied. I refrained from asking him when it was he last traveled through those parts. Remembering would be too raw, yet. We could save the tale for another afternoon.
Soon enough, the trees began to thin out as we approached the village of which Kouje had spoken. It was one of the many little stopgaps between the bustling hubs of activity that were the larger cities, governed by warlords, and the capital itself, the greatest city of all. I had never been through one of these smaller villages, since the main road used by our forces to get to the mountains did not run through such inconsequential places, only past them. I couldn’t help my curiosity, then, overpowering the feeling of strangeness. As Kouje guided the horse down the open dirt path that must have been the town’s main road, I lifted my head to peer inquisitively at the shabby wooden buildings. Some of them looked as though they’d fall apart at the first strong wind, but some of them hung cheerful cloth pennants from their doorways. Now and then, the banner would proclaim this building as an inn, and that one as a teahouse.
All at once, I felt such a sharp longing for green tea that my mouth felt wet with the taste of it.
Men and women lined the streets. Here a middle-aged man swept the dirt from the street in front of his shop, and there two young women were carrying baskets laden with dirt-covered vegetables. There was a fish vendor with a head like an ax who was selling fried eel on sticks to a group of children, all of whom clamored and pushed at one another to be the first-served. In the alleyway next to his stood a woman with a parasol. Her robes were a pale mauve.
Kouje stopped our horse in front of what I judged to be a noodle house. The smells emanating from it were enough to make my knees weak, even though I’d eaten my fill of rabbit earlier that morning. I felt my stomach give a traitorous growl. Behind me, Kouje dismounted, and I found myself hoping he hadn’t heard, that he wouldn’t think me ungrateful for his efforts.
“Perhaps I might try to strike a better bargain for my formal clothing,” he said, “if you are ever again to eat something besides rabbit meat.”
“Oh, no,” I protested. “I couldn’t. Really. It’s best just to have shoes, as you said, and not to waste money on such things.” I didn’t know how long a man could go on eating rabbit once a day, but I vowed that I would do it until our situation improved, or at least until I learned to catch my own fish.
Kouje was wise, but he was also tenderhearted when he did not have to be, and at these times it was up to me to preach sense. We would need sturdy shoes to travel as far as we were going. It was hardly so urgent that I be spoiled with hot noodles.
“I did not mean to suggest we waste money, Mamoru,” Kouje said, and I was pleased that he’d remembered to use my given name. It was still a surprise to hear it sound in his voice, but one that I would overcome soon enough. He held out his hands, and I took them, getting down off the horse.
It was rather a relief to be on my own two feet once more. I resisted the urge to rub my backside, endeavoring instead not to stand up too straight, as Kouje cautioned me earlier. Those who worked all day long for their living tended to stoop, as though a great yet invisible weight bore down upon them, the memory of their physical duties. I could manage stooping well enough, but I noticed that none of the women in this village wore their hair in one long braid, but rather kept it pinned up underneath a wrap of cloth, or looped back under as a bun. I touched my own braid with a sudden self-consciousness. Perhaps I would be better served to imitate the women, that I might blend in with our surroundings all the more.
Kouje had tied his own hair back in the simple style I’d seen worn by the tradesmen who visited the palace on occasion. He’d got his hair to behave for the most part, no longer kinked from years’ worth of wearing war braids, and I wondered whether he’d doused it with river water that morning, before I’d woken up.
“Come,” Kouje said, offering me a smile I did not recognize, until I realized that it was a companionable smile, the smile of equals. Without any warning, Kouje was playing a role, and I was expected to play along.
On sudden inspiration, I took his arm.
“One can learn everything there is to know in a noodle house at noon,” I said, “because at that hour, it is only all the people too important to work that frequent the place.”
“That is from the story of Aoi the Underhanded,” Kouje said, naming one of the legends of a slippery trickster who amassed his wealth from the misfortunes of others. He was more of a highwayman than a man to be respected or immortalized in tale or song, but as children my friends and I had enjoyed his stories best of all. If Kouje knew them better than I did, it was only because he was the one who’d told them to us, so many times over that we’d grown sick of them.
I didn’t know what had made me think of it, since they were stories for children, and I was no longer a child. But as we entered the shop, it was immediately clear that Aoi the Underhanded’s sage advice was as timeless as that of any mountain ascetic.
In other words, it was a time of day where men and women more important and better-monied than we were eating. And over their food, they gossiped.
Perhaps not surprisingly, they were gossiping about me.
It didn’t surprise me for a moment that the story had overtaken us, spreading faster than a fire in the capital. News traveled more quickly, it seemed, than single men could, and anyone traveling along the main roads would have passed the word on with greater alacrity, covering more ground than Kouje and I were capable of with our circuitous and covert path through the trees.
I thought of the other scandals I’d lived through during my time at the pa
lace—when young lady Ukifune had been courted, all too successfully, by Lord Kencho; or when Lord Chiake lost his heart, and his entire year’s stipend, to a young man from a brothel. Those sorts of stories kept men and women alike gossiping for months at a time in their separate rooms, and the subjects of their gossip could never enter a room again—that is, if they hadn’t been exiled from court for their behavior—without all the fans going up, and all the ladies there whispering behind their sleeves.
I’d always felt a mixture of unhappiness and pity when I thought of poor Ukifune, Lord Kencho, and Lord Chiake, and all the men and women who’d fallen afoul of gossip in our court.
When, if ever, would the gossip over Prince Mamoru cease?
“If you’ll excuse me,” Kouje said, suddenly halfway into the noodle house, standing with a deferent posture by the side of one of the busiest tables, “but you say there’s something happened to the esteemed younger prince?”
One of the women at the table, wearing periwinkle blue, gaped at him. She had broad, unrefined features, and especially vulgar lips. She reminded me in many ways of a bullfrog Kouje had caught for me once. I averted my gaze and stared, as so many servants did, at my feet.
“You haven’t heard about the trouble with the prince?” the woman asked, overly familiar.
One of the men slapped Kouje on the arm—which at first shocked me, until I realized it was actually a companionable thing to do—and laughed in disbelief. “You must’ve been on the road a long time, eh?”
“Sit down, and bring your girl,” another man said, taking a mouthwatering slurp of noodles from his bowl. Unconsciously, I licked my lips, then felt my cheeks coloring. At least my disguise was working well enough. “We’ll tell you everything.”
Kouje gestured me over, his pale eyes sorry for the crudeness of the motion. It was necessary, though, and I hurried over, still keeping my eyes fixed to the floor and my shoulders slightly stooped. It seemed the appropriate posture, for no one looked twice at me as we both took our seats.
“He’s stolen a diplomat’s horse and run away from the palace,” the bullfrog-woman said, clearly delighted to be the first one to break the news. “Can you believe it?”