Chapter Twenty-Nine Rui #2
“Rui.”
“That’s an interesting name,” the girl said. She gazed at her hands. Rui found herself wanting to look at those light eyes again.
“What’s yours?”
“Tokeishi-no-Aosaki Zusho-no-Nanamihime Atsuko Saeda.” The girl spoke with a formality born from a childhood in the court.
“Zusho?” Rui’s eyes widened.
“I’m sixteen,” the girl said. “I’m of age.”
“You’re a noble,” Rui said.
The girl looked away. “I’m just Atsu now.”
“What’re you doing fighting wars?”
Atsu shook her head, looking at her with something like a smile, overwhelmed, and in pain. “I don’t know.”
“Well,” Rui said, hesitantly, “I’m new here, too.”
Atsu began to speak, then stopped. “This isn’t what I thought it’d be,” she said at last.
Rui smiled. “Tell me about it.”
Atsu’s eyes met hers, but briefly, then fell to her thin hands again. After a moment, she began to rummage through her bag. “Look. Spearberries. I found some by the river. Want one?”
She handed Rui one of the bright red berries like a bead; it fit in the palm of her hand. “Though I suppose they’ll be ground to mush soon enough. They don’t last long once they’re plucked.”
Atsu fell silent, pressed her thumb into the fruit until it burst, leaving a crimson stain across her fingers. Her face lay streaked with tears. “My parents,” she said. “They were at Deer Valley. They cut off my father’s head.”
“But Zusho are a Keishi family.” Rui didn’t understand. “What’re you doing here?”
Atsu could only laugh. A painful laugh, a laugh of tears. “Not so loyal anymore. They’ve been overlooked too long… And the Gekko’in is with them now.”
“The Gensei heir?”
She nodded. “They’re killing everybody. Killed children. Bashed my little brother’s head against the wall. I had to get out.” She shook her head again. “Had to get out.”
So many, Rui thought, so many of us, lost and orphaned by these wars.
“My parents were killed as well,” she said.
The girl glanced at her again, with the simple, unmoored gaze of someone who needed help.
Rui offered a hand. “We’ll help you,” she said.
“Don’t worry… New recruits gotta stick together, right? ”
“I’ll never forgive them.” Atsu wiped her tears away. Her simple sadness had been replaced with something else, something darker. Rui could see it in her, see it as it burned. “Never,” she said again. The spearberry juice from her fingers had left a stain on her cheek, faint pink, like rouge.
Soon a sandaled foot came out of the darkness and poked Rui on the back of the neck. Myorin was standing on the top of the dyke, wearing her armor and an amused expression on her face.
“So you’ve met,” Myorin said. “Atsu has been helping us with messages from the capital. Thanks to her, we know where the prince will go.”
“Go? What do you mean? Go where?”
Myorin turned, curt. “We’ve had some news.”
Soon, Rui was following Myorin to her tent. “Aosaki-no-Atsu. Of the Tokeishi line. That kid. We found her a few days ago, outside Tose, starving, trying to race a dying horse down to Satsuki.”
“What happened?”
“They killed her father at Deer Valley. Her mother made her run. She’ll be executed.” Myorin sighed. “It’s all starting now. The scholar-kings are in a panic.” She unbuckled her sword and placed it on a stand by the cot bed. “I wonder if that will be a good thing for us. Or a bad one.”
“I think unrest, and all these fleeing people, it’s bound to be a bad thing.” Rui opened her hands. “But it also means it’ll help your lord if he tries to gather opponents of the court.”
“Smart,” Myorin said. “Help me out of this.”
Myorin had no helmet, but her long hair was tied back under a white headband. Now she handed Rui her wrist-guards and began stripping off the lamellar armor, piece by piece.
“Were you scouting?”
“Just along the lines. Tsuna’s out there now, she’ll be back by sunrise.”
Rui helped her untie the large shoulder-shields that rested over her upper arms. The pauldrons could be shifted toward the front or back as needed and served as effective shields against incoming arrows.
The armor underneath was heavier, but made of lamellar plates, and still allowed Myorin enough mobility to move quickly when it mattered.
“These fleeing people.” Rui struggled for the words. “It’s bound to be bad, but… it helps us, right?”
Myorin nodded. When her chest- and body-plates were removed, she held out her arms and Rui removed the arm-wrappings, then untied Myorin’s waist-guard, a pleated skirt of armor.
Myorin shrugged out of the undershirt and began changing into more comfortable clothes.
Rui, folding the armor segments carefully on Myorin’s wooden chest, caught sight of the woman’s bare torso for a moment, and saw the tattoo that stretched from her shoulders to the small of her back.
It was the image of a spirit-animal with the body of a tiger, the face of a bear, and the tusks and nose of an elephant, eyes burning with power on her shoulder.
“You have tattoos?”
Myorin smirked. “Oh, I know. Not so common for a highborn, is it? It’s a baku. Dreameater. It comes in the night, takes your nightmares.”
Rui couldn’t help but smile at the fact that Myorin had turned her back on the arbitrary and hateful customs of her class, and intentionally marked herself with something that was usually seen as a sign against someone, like a brand…
“I’ve never seen a noble do that,” she said at last. “Get a tattoo.”
“Well, I’m not a noble,” Myorin said. “Fuck ’em. Who cares what they think. I’m a Gensei.”
These warriors, Rui thought, they’re so proud. Their whole lives are about saving face. “What’s it for?”
“Protection,” Myorin said. “We pray to the god of dreams, to guide us, watch over us… You’re Jibashiri now. You should, too. We come at night, but when we come for our enemies, it’s not just their dreams we eat.”
She paused then, settling. “There is such a thing as evil in this world, little-sister. There’s such a thing as too far.
But people don’t do anything, because they’re afraid.
Afraid of upending what little stability they have.
So, they just sit and wonder, ‘Why do things get worse?’ I have no tolerance for that. ”
“Guess you’re right,” Rui said.
Myorin turned to her, close. “Why’re you out here, Rui? Why have you really come?”
A strange look, almost pity. Rui gazed at her feet.
Myorin shifted. “Everybody’s looking for someone, little-sister. It’s all right.”
“I want to help you,” Rui said. “But… I don’t know if I’ll do any good.”
“Do what you can. It’s good enough. Better than most.”
“Or it kills you,” Rui said.
Myorin sighed. “We don’t care about your birth, you know.
We’re Jibashiri, we run on the ground. We’re dreameaters.
All of us. That’s why they fucking hate me in the capital: ’cause I fight what they should be fighting.
They won’t see us as people until we make them see us, little-sister. So that’s what I do.”
“‘Evil acts bring evil outcomes’,” Rui quoted.
Myorin shrugged. “Lotta hate out there.” She fell silent then, and to Rui, seemed terribly sad.
“The louder you are to talk about that, the quicker they’ll be to shut you down,” Myorin said at last. “Quicker you’ll be dead.”
A few moments passed, and eventually the hour bell began to ring. Rui startled, realizing it had gotten late. “I should go.”
Myorin eyed her. “Stay a while.”
It was common for high warriors to take attendants as their bedpartners, and for a moment, Rui was awash with longing. With a feeling of… of what? Of being chosen? Yet what did she really want? Sex? Love? Friendship? She didn’t know. She stepped away.
“They… they gave me a tent by the horses, ame’in… I’m supposed to report… I’m sorry…”
“You don’t have to apologize.” Myorin had moved to her things now, and was pulling on a cloak. “I’m not keeping you here. But there’s a fire if you want to come back.”
Thank you, Rui wanted to say, but nothing came out. Nothing ever comes out. She could feel herself closing off, same as always, and didn’t know why. Her chest ached; she left.
She walked the camp, lost in a whirlwind of emotion she didn’t understand.
The days were growing short. Midwinter: a new year approached.
What would it bring? She thought of the soft line of Myorin’s face, her dark eyes.
Her graceful movements. The muscles on her shoulders, hips.
Hell, she thought. What are you doing? She’s way too old for you…
She kicked herself. Who are you kidding?
Just like me, she thought, to fall in love with every hot-blooded kijin that I meet. And every man and woman of them barely knows I exist.
Pain laced through her, the god-scar, getting worse.
She felt it at the bottom of her chest, down into her core, spreading out like tar.
Sometimes she felt it in her gut, thin as spiderwebs, tough as silk, spiraling into the center of her body, her chest, and her heart.
It’ll keep going until it covers my legs and reaches the end of my fingertips, and then it will be all I am, and what I am, what was me, will be lost.
Something changed, a glimmer, a depth. She pitched to the side, suddenly nauseated. A light caught at the corner of her eye. Movement. A glow, like fireflies in air. She felt the pain like a splinter in her chest.
The Hososhi was here.
“What do you want?” she snarled.
“Always the question, always the same.” Their voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once. The Hososhi shifted before her, always at the edges of her vision, a rustling of leaves and a gust of wind she couldn’t quite escape.
“I’m tired.”
“Good. Then you won’t take your mission lightly.”
“I don’t know what my mission is!” Rui shouted.
The fields lay silent.
“Hososhi, please! You have to tell me something! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, I don’t know what you want me to do! You have to tell me something.”
“I have a use for you,” the god said once again. “The demon is coming, Rui. Listen for the bells.”
“What will I do?” Rui stumbled, shaking her head. “Please, tell me something. What will I do?”
“You will die,” the god said, and vanished.