Chapter Ten Rui #2
He paced closer. “You know,” he said, “most no’in shiver and bow into the dirt when we come by. Yet, you do not.”
“If I’ve done something to offend…”
“You stood before us at the shooting grounds.”
“I – was raised in a temple. Dogs, foxes, they’re messengers, for O-ine. And, I was raised… It’s cruel to…”
“It’s my right.”
“Then your rights are cruel.”
She’d spoken once again before she meant to, and braced herself for his response. But instead, Hakaru laughed.
“Our lands are truly blessed,” he said. “Even the no’in have real heart. They’re pretty, too.”
She gritted her teeth, saying nothing, and felt the sinking come again. Stepping back, eyes low, she stood in what she hoped was a respectful posture. He laughed again; Hakaru, the shining prince, he looked so happy and disgusting, like nothing could ever go wrong for him at all.
“Yes,” he said, “you should be proud. A no’in blade of grass, and here, now. Working for the lords of Aizumi.”
The hollow was a place at the bottom of your heart, no’in said, where you went and hid and submerged yourself, when kijin came to play.
A place where you did not exist, where you merely sat and nodded and performed your bows.
Where you said, yes, sir, yes ame’in, yes, lord, anything you say.
Where you found yourself sinking like a devil had pulled you, in the moment where you believed their words of kusa might be true.
Don’t forget yourself, Old Man Goro said so often: don’t forget you’re human too. No matter how they treat you. We have it better, here, than most. There are many no’in have it worse.
But still, the sinking came.
Still, the hollow pulled you down.
When I grow up, Rui once thought, I’ll see the world.
But now the world seemed to have been locked away, taken by those other people, generations of lordships who ruined the earth before she was ever born, and now she could only stand, and fall back, while it smoldered.
Now she could only try to think: survive.
But survival was not the same as life.
Survival was where you went when you were in the hollow place.
Survival was what you did when you had no hope of more.
But I will have more, she thought. I will find something better.
He glanced at her, a sparkle in his eyes she couldn’t read, and she realized he’d been talking, realized he was looking at her with something near to greed.
To hunger. To a man who doesn’t need to ask for what he wants.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “Though a stable is too… inelegant for a face such as yours.”
She recoiled; yet, outwardly, she didn’t move. He seemed to sense it. Was that a hesitation? Then, voices, calling from outside. The stern tones of his rigid older brother. Hakaru rolled his eyes. He took his time. He laughed. He played around.
Then, he stopped.
“The fuck is that?”
Rui froze. Hakaru was staring at her chest. The small jade bead on its string. It had come loose from her tunic; it glimmered in the light.
His face hardened. He didn’t seem a shining prince anymore, but something harsher, something more vicious, glaring at her with suspicion in his eyes.
“You fucking thief.”
In an instant, something sharp had changed, and she was thrown to her knees, and he loomed over her, and everything was wrong.
It was like the cracking of an egg, a shattered thing.
Panic stabbed her chest. “Where’d you get that?
” He grabbed at her, the string, the necklace. “No’in don’t wear jade.”
“Brother,” Nihira called from without. “What now?”
“A thief,” spat Hakaru. “A fucking—”
“No,” she pleaded, “I never…”
He ignored her, pulling her to the door. The Betto, knowing what would happen, tried to make himself vanish.
“She’s a blade of grass,” Nihira called. “What matter does it make?”
“Give it here!”
Hakaru shoved her to the wall, fingers grasping for the bead on the string; she stumbled, clutching her rake. “That’s a Gensei jewel,” he shouted, “not for some common – Give it here!”
Panic welling, she pleaded, “No, no, I promise, no…” Breathless, useless words, mumbled promises of fear, a drawn-out, spoken cry of danger.
“Hakaru,” Nihira called, “let it go.”
Rui pulled away, twisting, and when he grabbed for her, she flinched back with the rake still in her hand.
The prongs caught him on the cheek.
He fell, against the door; a hand went to his face.
Everything in the world slipped away.
“How dare you,” he hissed, feeling his jaw. A minor wound, a scratch, but it was enough.
She’d struck a lord. She’d struck a kijin.
He went for his sword. She ran. The Betto stumbled before them, prostrate, begging for forgiveness, but Hakaru shoved off with knotted fists, even as his brother called for him to stop, and Rui panicked, saw nothing but the rage, the fists, the sword, and kicked him in the knee.
When he fell, she fled.
Past the stables and the horses within.
Past the courtyard and the trees she’d once admired.
Past the winding path, and the barn gate, and the road beyond.
After that, only fragments. “Get away from me!” she cried, stumbling, hitting cobblestones. Nihira appeared, trying to get his brother back; she tripped again, clawed herself away.
She didn’t know where she was going. Her leg bloomed in pain; she fell. All she wanted was a home, a place where she could say, I’m here – only now the guards were rushing at her and she heard the screeching of a crowd and smelled the pale, flat stench of terror.
How had it come to this, so fast? This, over a stupid little thing?
She found her feet too late. The first guard rammed her from behind, and they went flying, both of them, into the dirt.
Whipping around, she landed a fist in his face, loosening his arms. He hit her, knocked the air from her lungs, and left her gasping, and his hand was on her wrists, a massive weight pressing down, and she spit at him; he smacked her in the sternum, knocked the wind from her again.
She wheezed, trying to wrench sideways and twist, and finally she kicked him, hard, into the wall.
And she was off.
The gate lay just ahead.
There was a time when she would’ve given anything to work here, in Kitano.
To go in through the gate, the wide yard by the hillside, the winding path that led to Mount Kanzan and the temple at its peak.
To walk as highborn walked, as kijin walked with their embroidered robes; to speak to the boy she’d been found with, to say, You think we could be friends?
And to find, as if two souls had met inside her, a kind of coming home.
Instead, she felt a wave of horror.
Instead, it was too late.
I should have stayed at the temple, she thought. I should have stayed with the nuns. I should have prayed to O-ine before I left.
Now the gate was close. Now the guards had drawn their blades.
She was almost there. Almost free. She had no plan. She didn’t know what she would do. Didn’t know what she could do. Only this: escape.
A guard beside the gatehouse. He was young – too young – and as he lunged, she spun inside his arc and tried to get through the gate, but they were already hauling it closed, and she was out of time, and the guard, the boy, he turned, his spear about to gut her, but he hesitated.
A flash of indecision marred his eyes, and he faltered.
And she leaped, just as he made a half-hearted swing across her legs.
She jumped over the blade, landed in a roll, and when he made another strike, she ducked beneath the razor edge, closing in before he turned, and, on instinct, yanked his spear, slammed his chest with a shoulder, and knocked him down.
The short-spear fell into the dust; she grabbed it, taking it from him, and, keeping her momentum, swung in three quick cuts to keep the other guards at bay.
Then ran off, tripping once with the shaft and making for a side gate.
Guards poured from watch posts. She had to change direction fast, spinning with the spear in the air like a windmill.
The ways were blocked. Soon, three more guards behind her.
A sally-port beyond, and in front of her a wall, and she spun too fast around its corner, and the boy was there, the youngest guard: sword in one hand, he tried to grab her with the other, and she turned, and the speed was too much, she’d already spun back the way she came, and there he was, too late, colliding into her.
The spear – his spear, the one she stole –
It caught him in the gut.
His sword fell.
He made a strange, wet, gasping sound, his eyes wide, full of fear.
She stepped back. She dropped the spear. It didn’t fall.
It remained lodged in his abdomen.
His mouth opened and closed like a fish. His eyes blinked, met hers. Then he stumbled. Blood leaked from his mouth. Someone shouted: “Help!” “Get her!” “Murder!”
She grabbed his short-sword from the dirt.
She raced for the sally-gate.
She ran. Ran past the dying guard with his frozen eyes and his bloodied hand still reaching up as though to grasp her. She ran and ran.
Past the road, the woods and branches scratching at her face.
Past the outvillage, the small winding trail she’d built.
Past the cut-through, toward her little shrine.
To the Blue Woods, where no one ever went, tears falling, great shuddering gasps raging through her as her mind fought the truth of what she’d done. When she stopped at the hidden shrine to catch her breath, her arms and legs were shaking so hard she couldn’t stand.
She collapsed. She couldn’t breathe. She crawled to the shrine. When she looked up, the stone-carved fox, a servant of the god, was staring down.
A moan came from her chest. Her arms and hands and cheek were laced with cuts, from the brambles and the bristles of the trees and brush she’d torn to get away.
The young man’s sword was in her hand. She’d heard shouting behind her as she ran from the sally-gate – the only reason she escaped was that she knew the cutbacks and the shortcuts through the woods.
But they would come. They would find her. They would bring her back.
Her hands were specked with red.
“What have I—” She stopped, with a gasp, a sob, her head resting on the cool splintered wood at the bottom of O-ine’s shrine.
She gathered herself as much as she could, still shaking, and began to pray for guidance, for a way to undo what she’d done. She was crying freely now. The thought came, clear, as if the gods had put it there themselves:
You have taken a life, Rui Misosazai. There is no going back.
She turned toward the empty trail, and waited, expecting at any instant to be surrounded by Hakaru and his men, or his older brother Nihira, the Wolfsmoke.
At some point she stopped, ragged, coughing for breath.
She sank down. She tried to hide. She trembled.
She found the jewel on its string, tucked it away.
The woods loomed huge and silent, night came swiftly to a frost. She sat against the tree, and met another wave of fear, and pain, deep down, in the center of her heart.
She saw the guard in her mind’s eye, the shock and fear that bloomed across his face.
He was just a boy. And she’d killed him.