Chapter 10
Kazashita
The reek slammed into me before I stepped off the ship.
Bara.
The jewel of the Empire.
The beating heart of civilization.
It reeked of sweat and unwashed bodies pressed too close together.
Human waste ran in open channels along the dock, as smoke from a thousand cooking fires mixed with incense from temples I could not see.
Beneath it all, strong enough to taste if I breathed too deeply, was something metallic and wrong that I recognized immediately as blood.
I shouldered my pack and pushed into the crowd.
The docks were chaos. Sailors shouted in languages I did not know.
Merchants haggled over prices for cargo still dripping with seawater.
Children begged and cried and darted between legs, quick as rats, hands reaching for anything not secured.
I caught one boy’s wrist as his fingers brushed my coin purse.
He looked up at me with ancient eyes on a youth-filled face, then twisted free and vanished into the press of bodies.
As many times as I visited the capital, helped Kichi offload his cargo and celebrate his scores, I had never become accustomed to the blur of humanity that was the capital. It was a living organism made of flesh and noise and desperation. The sheer number of people made my head spin.
I pushed through the crowd, moving away from the docks and deeper into the city.
Beggars lined the streets. Not just a few, but dozens.
Hundreds, perhaps. They were everywhere, impossible to count.
They sat against walls with bowls extended, their faces hollow with hunger.
Some were missing limbs—casualties of war, most likely—while others bore the marks of disease.
One man had no eyes, just empty sockets that wept constant tears. He called out to passersby in a voice worn thin by pleading. No one gave him coin. No one spared him a glance. I passed him by as well. I had so little myself. The guilt of it sat heavy in my chest.
Down a side street, a man lay in a spreading pool of his own blood. His stomach had been cut, precise and clean. A Samurai stood nearby, wiping his blade, his expression bored. Our eyes met for a heartbeat. I lowered my head and looked away quickly, kept walking, my heart hammering.
Death was not merely an event in Bara. It was scenery.
I found an inn I remembered from one of our landings tucked between a noodle shop and what looked like a whorehouse masquerading as a gambling den.
The sign proclaimed it the “Harbor’s Rest.” The building looked like it might collapse in a strong wind.
Paint peeled from warped boards. The door hung crooked on rusted hinges.
But it was cheap, and cheap was all I could afford.
Inside, the common room was dim and smelled of old sake and older sweat. A handful of patrons hunched over rickety tables. The innkeeper, a woman past middle age, her face weathered and suspicious, glared as I stepped up to her bar.
“Room?” I asked.
She looked me over. “Two mon a night.”
I counted out the coins, watching my small pile of copper shrink. Each coin represented a meal I would skip and a day closer to destitution.
My room was sparse and barely larger than a closet, with a thin sleeping mat, and a basin of water with a film on top.
But it had a door.
I dropped my pack and sat, pressing my palms against my eyes. My head pounded. My body ached. And the impossibility of what I was attempting crashed over me like a wave.
Bara was massive. How did one find a single person in all of this? A single slave?
My stomach growled.
I counted my remaining coins again and winced.
But I needed to eat.
More, I needed to listen.
By the time I returned to the common room, it had filled with the dinner crowd: sailors mostly, their skin weathered by sun and salt, a few merchants, and dock workers still dusty from their labor.
I ordered rice and pickled vegetables—the cheapest meal—and a small carafe of sake.
The food arrived lukewarm, the rice slightly burned.
The sake was cold and tasted like it had been strained through someone’s boot.
But I ate and drank.
And I listened.
At the closest table, three sailors drank heavily, their voices growing louder with each cup. They were rough men with scarred hands and missing teeth. One had a tattoo of an anchor on his forearm. Another wore an earring that marked him as having survived a shipwreck.
“—telling you, the northern routes are fucked,” the one with the anchor tattoo slurred in a thick coastal accent, swallowing half his consonants. “We tried to make port at Foku last month. You know what we found? Fucking ashes. Whole town burned to the waterline.”
“Asami rebels?” asked the one with the earring.
“Could’ve been rebels. Could’ve been the Emperor’s fuckin’ dragon had a rotten tooth and decided to burn the place to cinders.
Who the fuck knows? Result’s the same—town’s gone, harbor’s unusable, and we had to sail another two days to find a safe port.
” He spat on the floor. “Lost half our profit in all the extra fuckin’ travel. ”
The third sailor, younger than the others, leaned forward. “My brother’s with a battalion up north. We haven’t heard from him in four months.”
“Probably dead.” The one with the anchor spat before throwing back his sake, then refilling his cup.
“Fuck you, Gento.”
“I’m serious. You hear what happened at Shiroyama? Whole garrison—three hundred men—just gone. No bodies, no survivors, nothing. Like they walked into the mountains and got swallowed up.”
The younger sailor’s face paled. “That’s just a story. Somebody trying to scare—”
“Story?” Gento laughed, harsh and bitter.
“Cap’n won’t take cargo north of the Kawa River anymore, not for any price, says it’s not worth gettin’ your throat cut or gettin’ conscripted by some desperate army shit.
” He reached for the carafe again. “Face it, kid, the north is lost. Emperor can’t hold it.
Question is how long before the rot spreads south. ”
A merchant at the next table—silk robes, soft hands, clearly listening—leaned over. “You should watch your tongue. Saying such things—”
“Sayin’ what? The truth?” Gento fixed him with bloodshot eyes. “Fuck me. Everybody knows it. They just don’t have the rocks to say it out loud because they’re scared of—” He lowered his voice slightly. “Because they’re scared.”
I seized the moment, leaning across the space between our tables. “I just arrived today,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “From a small village up the coast. What’s everyone afraid of exactly?”
All eyes turned to me. Assessing. Calculating whether I was genuine or trouble.
Gento shrugged. “You really don’t know?”
I shook my head. “I know there are rumors about the north, but here in the capital, I assumed—”
“You assumed wrong.” He gestured to the serving girl—a tired-looking teen with burn scars on her arms. “Another carafe, and one for my new friend here. Yeah, the pretty one. He sounds dumb as shit, but look at that face.”
The serving woman glared, one brow rising as she scanned my face, then leered at my chest and arms, before scurrying away.
I started to protest because I couldn’t afford another bottle, but he waved me off. “Welcome to fuckin’ Bara. You’ll need the drink once you understand the shit-pit you’ve sailed into.”
The serving girl brought the sake. I poured for Gento first—the proper etiquette. He squinted but grunted approval.
“So,” he said, settling back. “What do you know about how things work here?”
“Not much,” I admitted.
“Then let me educate you.” He took a long drink.
“The Emperor—may his divine wisdom illuminate us all”—the words were ritual, but his tone made them mockery—“rules with his fat ass on the Jade Throne inside the Jade Palace. Or supposedly, he rules. No one’s actually seen the great old fart in, what, five years? ”
“Six,” the younger sailor muttered.
“Six years. Think about that. Court ceremonies happen behind silk screens. Edicts post with his seal, but who knows if he’s even the one stampin’ them?” Gento leaned forward. “Some still call him a god, pray to him in temples, but gods don’t hide. Gods don’t need bodyguards and walls and—”
“Enough.” The nearby merchant’s voice was sharp. “You speak treason, blasphemy against the Divine One.”
“I speak what everyone thinks.” Gento snarled but did lower his voice.
“Point is, the Emperor’s a figurehead. Maybe he’s sick.
Maybe he’s dead. Or maybe he’s just too old and scared to show his face.
Fuck me if it matters. Whoever sits on the throne doesn’t give a shit about the likes of us anyway. ”
A moment passed as every man shot back a cup and then refilled.
“I saw a man killed today,” I said quietly. “By a Samurai. Just . . . killed him in the street.”
“And you’re mad no one stopped it?” Gento laughed without humor, feigning offense he likely couldn’t feel beneath his alcohol haze.
“Of course the fuck not. That’s how they keep order—with fear and steel.
Look at a Samurai wrong, and you’re dead.
Complain about taxes too loudly, dead. They’re tryin’ to squeeze tighter, keep control, but”—he gestured broadly, sloshing sake onto the table—“you can’t hold back the tide by squeezin’.
Just makes it want to burst through harder. ”
“You think the rebellion will reach Bara?” the younger sailor asked, voice barely above a whisper.
“Fuck me if it isn’t already here,” Gento said.
“You feel it, don’t you? That tension. It’s like everybody’s waitin’ for somethin’ to snap?
” He looked around the room. “Beggars multiplying. Food prices rising. More Samurai on the streets. More bodies. It’s all connected, see?
First the north falls apart, refugees flood south, strains the city, people get hungry and angry, and suddenly—”
A man entered the common room. He looked older, well dressed, with eyes that moved too deliberately across the faces present.
Conversations didn’t stop, but they shifted—became louder, more mundane.
Someone started telling a joke about a fisherman and a merchant’s wife.
Gento fell silent and poured himself more sake, suddenly very interested in the bottom of his cup.
The man found a table in the corner and ordered food, but his presence charged the atmosphere, made the air feel heavier.
I leaned toward Gento. “Who—”
“Someone who reports to someone,” Gento muttered. “Just . . . watch what you say.”
We drank in silence for a while. The conversations around us stayed light and false. The tension was palpable.
Finally, the man in the corner finished his meal and left, and those in the room seemed to exhale collectively.
“See?” Gento said quietly. “That’s Bara for you. Can’t even get right pissed in peace without wonderin’ who’s gonna report you.” He shook his head. “I’m leavin’ as soon as my ship’s loaded, back to the southern routes. Let Bara rot.”
“What about your brother?” the younger sailor asked.
Gento’s face went hard. “What about him? If he’s alive, he’ll find his way home. If he’s not . . .” He shrugged and stood. “I need to piss.”
He stumbled toward the back of the inn, leaving the younger sailor stricken, only to return to find the conversation had shifted to safer topics—ships and cargo and complaints about harbor fees.
I nursed my sake and tried to look interested, but my mind was racing.
I had learned nothing about Kaneko. These men knew nothing—and cared even less—about individual slaves or where specific people might have been sold.
But I had learned about the city itself—its tensions, its power structures, its dangers. And I had learned to be more careful.
I pressed my fingers against my temples. The headache was getting worse.
“You all right, friend?” Gento asked, his words slurred now.
“Just tired. Long journey.”
“Aren’t we all?” He laughed. “Tired of runnin’, tired of fightin’, tired of pretendin’ things are fine when everything’s going to shit.” He raised his cup. “To exhaustion! May it claim us all before the rebellion does!”
A few men drank. Others looked away.
I stood, my legs unsteady. “Thank you for the drink.”
Gento waved me off. “Don’t thank me. Just . . . be careful. Bara eats people like you. Chews them up and shits them out.” His eyes focused on me with sudden clarity. “If you’re smart, you’ll leave. Tomorrow. First ship out.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Then you’re a fool.” He turned back to his cup. “But at least you’re a pretty fool. That’s worth somethin’, I suppose.”
The others grumbled a chuckle. Drunken slurs drew drunken laughter. They quickly lost interest, so I climbed the stairs back to my tiny room. Each step felt like lifting stones.
My body was exhausted, but my mind would not stop racing.
I lay on the thin mat and stared at the ceiling.
Somewhere above, footsteps creaked. Somewhere below, more muffled laughter.
The city hummed outside my window, never sleeping, never quiet, a constant reminder of how vast it was, how impossible my task.
One man. In a city of hundreds of thousands. In an empire tearing itself apart.
I closed my eyes against the sting of tears I would not let fall.
Outside, Bara hummed and buzzed. It was the pulse of a dying empire, still beating, still pretending it would live forever.
But I could hear the cracks spreading.
And I wondered if any of us would survive what came next.