Chapter 18
Kazashita
Ihad to get inside the House of Petals. That certainty sat in my gut like a stone, heavy and immovable. I couldn’t explain it logically. I had no evidence or proof, nothing but instinct and desperate hope. But I knew somehow. I knew Kaneko was there.
The problem was everything else.
I peered at my reflection in a puddle and barely recognized the waif looking back.
My clothes—the only ones I had left—were little more than torn rags, stained with fish guts and tar and reeking sweat.
My face was gaunt, stubbled, and marked too many nights of sleeping in alleyways.
My hands were scarred and callused, with broken nails and one finger bent at an odd angle from a crate that had slipped a few weeks ago.
I looked like something a whale had failed to digest and coughed up onto the shore.
The House of Petals catered to the wealthy and powerful, men in silk robes who paid more for a single evening than I had earned in six months of dock work.
After hiring the rickshaw to follow the madame, I had one mon in my pocket.
One copper coin that might buy a bowl of watery soup or a cup of bad sake.
If it hadn’t been so achingly painful, the whole thing would’ve been laughable.
But I would make it work. Somehow.
I doubled my shifts to earn extra coin, worked dawn to dusk hauling cargo, then took evening work unloading fishing vessels that came in after dark.
My body screamed in protest every night when I fell onto my pallet.
My muscles burned, and my back developed an ache that never fully subsided, even when I slept.
Every mon I earned went into a small pouch I kept tied inside my shirt, pressed against my skin. I didn’t trust leaving it in my room.
Over the next few weeks, the coins accumulated. One mon became two. Two became five. Five became ten. It was not enough, would never be enough at this rate, but I kept working, kept hauling, kept putting one foot in front of the other even when my body wanted to collapse.
Kaneko is there, and he’s worth all of this. Hells, he’s worth everything. Just a little more. Just a little longer.
The mantra kept me moving when nothing else would.
On the twentieth day of this brutal routine—or was it the twentieth?—the days had started to blur—I stumbled into the common room of the Harbor’s Rest. My hands were raw from rope burns, my shoulders felt like they might separate from my body, and my legs threatened to give out with every step.
But I was hungry, so hungry that my stomach had stopped growling and started cramping, sending sharp pains through my gut. I ordered a bowl of soup, mostly water with a few vegetables floating like dead fish in the harbor—but it was hot, and it was food, and it cost only one mon.
I found a dark corner and sat with my back to the wall, watching the room while I ate.
The common room was packed. Sailors were everywhere—drinking, laughing, shouting over each other.
The air was thick with smoke and the smell of unwashed men and sake.
A fight broke out near the bar, two men grappling while their companions cheered them on.
The innkeeper barely glanced up from pouring drinks.
This was the scum of Bara. The bottom layer. Men like me who had nothing and nowhere to go.
I kept my head down and focused on my soup, lifting the bowl to my lips. It tasted like hot saltwater with a hint of decay, but I did not care. My body needed fuel.
Two tables over, men threw coins into a pot and dice across the table, cursing when they lost, crowing when they won.
The pile of copper and silver grew, shrank, then grew again.
I watched it with dull interest. Gambling was a fool’s game, a way to lose what little you had even faster.
I’d seen that a thousand times with men on The Worm.
But gods, that pile of coins. If I could win just one round—
No. I shook my head, forcing the thought away. I could not afford to gamble, could not risk losing even a single precious mon. Each one I earned drew me closer to Kaneko.
I was about to return to my soup when movement caught my eye.
A figure slipped in from the street and moved to the table next to mine—one occupied by sailors who looked different from the rest. They were cleaner and better dressed, their clothes were worn but well maintained.
Their postures spoke of discipline rather than drunken revelry.
Officers, perhaps, maybe even a ship’s captain and his seconds?
The figure who entered wore black. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
It was as though he or she somehow repelled any light that dared alight on their clothing.
Oddly, no one else seemed to notice the figure enter, weave through the myriad of tables, then sit.
I watched with interest, but no one else batted an eye or turned a head.
I should not have paid attention, should have focused on my soup and my own miserable existence, but everything about the scene nagged at me. I couldn’t look away.
Curious, I angled myself slightly to better hear without appearing to listen. I only caught every few words, but they were enough to chill my blood.
“. . . are ready,” one of the sailors was saying, an older man, scarred and weathered. “. . . kegs . . . marked and loaded . . .”
The hooded figure’s voice was neutral, hard to place—male or female, young or old. “And the others?”
“Three . . . confirmed.”
“When?” another sailor asked.
“Not your concern.” The hooded figure leaned forward. “. . . attack . . . . demonstration of . . . after . . . with us or . . . targets.”
My heart stilled.
With us or become targets.
The rebellion. This was rebel talk—right here in this tavern, my tavern. They weren’t even trying to hide it beyond lowered voices and a dark hood.
I stared down at my soup, forcing my expression to remain neutral even as my heart hammered. This was not my business, not my problem. I was here for one reason only—to find Kaneko and get out of this city before it tore itself apart.
But . . .
I had just heard something dangerous, something that could get me killed if anyone realized I had been listening.
I finished my soup quickly, keeping my movements as casual as my tattered nerves allowed, then stood and walked toward the stairs, not looking back at the table or acknowledging those who’d sat near me or what I’d heard.
Get to my room. Stay out of it. Focus on Kaneko.
I climbed the stairs, each step an effort with my exhausted legs. Behind me, the common room’s noise continued. Laughter and shouting and the rattle of dice. And somewhere in the middle of it, a conspiracy unfolding in plain sight.
I slipped inside my room, closed the door, and leaned against it, breathing hard.
Within the week, there will be an attack.
That’s what they were saying, wasn’t it? I was shoving bits and pieces together, but they fit. Damn it, they fit perfectly.
I should tell someone, warn someone.
But who? The city guard? The Samurai?
They were already overwhelmed, already brutal in their attempts to maintain order.
The Emperor’s people?
I would be arrested just for approaching the palace.
The dockmaster?
He probably already knew—or was part of it.
I couldn’t trust anyone. Not anymore. And if I spoke up, if I drew attention to myself, I would become a target, and my search for Kaneko would end before it truly began.
No. I heard nothing, saw nothing. I’m just another exhausted laborer trying to survive.
I lay on my mat and tried to sleep despite the hammering of my heart.
In too few hours, I would work again, earn more coins, get closer to the impossible sum I needed to enter the House of Petals, and whatever was coming—whatever attack the hooded figure had spoken of—I prayed it wouldn’t interfere with my purpose.
I prayed it did not kill me before I found him.