The air in the tent Heero had pitched beside where they’d hidden their gundams was a trifle too warm — in large part thanks to the brush he’d arranged against the canvas siding for optimal concealment — but still he was sitting just within the open flaps where he could see and hear both inside and out, since he didn’t believe it wise to leave Duo alone at the moment. After having gone to the trouble of resuscitating him and hauling him back here (and the latter, at least, had been some considerable trouble), he wasn’t going to abandon him possibly to his death and waste all prior effort.
It wasn’t merely that. True, he was never pleased by wasted effort, but here he thought there was also some actual desire on his part for Duo not to die. Duo was often a useful ally, and allies of any type were rare enough in the current climate that Heero didn’t want to waste one of them either. And though the agitation he’d felt during the process of resuscitating this one had struck him as inexplicably excessive for the situation, mirroring the oddly heightened hope of this very moment for some sign that Duo had not suffered permanent damage, Heero wasn’t dwelling on it. He merely waited.
Slight indications of Duo’s change in consciousness sounded faintly before the crinkling of the emergency blanket signaled it more loudly and Heero looked back around to see the prone figure shifting. He reached over to put a hand on Duo’s shoulder. “Don’t move too much,” he admonished. “I assessed your condition the best I could, but you need to confirm your status.”
“You know, some people, when their injured friend wakes up, say things like, ‘Hey, how are you feeling?’ or ‘You’re going to be all right.’ But not Heero. Heero’s like, ‘Make sure your bones aren’t secretly broken before you move!'”
There was no reproof in Duo’s tone, no hint of bitterness. In fact he was smiling faintly, and simultaneously fixing Heero with an odd expression. It was a look such as Duo had never given him before, and suggested, in its turn, that it was seeing things about him Duo had never noticed before. An expression like that as the first to cross Duo’s face upon his regaining consciousness seemed a little illogical, and perhaps an indication of more injury to the brain than Heero had originally diagnosed.
“‘How are you feeling?’ isn’t specific enough. And I can’t know yet whether you’re going to be all right.”
“I know.” Duo’s smile widened, and he raised a hand to clasp the one of Heero’s that urged him to stay down. Though the movement was slow, the squeeze he gave was relatively strong and definitely warm. Heero withdrew his hand quickly.
“All right,” Duo grunted. “Checking now.” He started working his muscles, making the blanket shudder on top of him but not sitting up. Though the occasional grimace crossed his face as he felt out all the damage that had been done to his body back in the base, still he was giving Heero that unusual and unusually happy look. Though perhaps ‘happy’ wasn’t quite the right word. Heero sometimes had difficulties with emotions and how to describe them, and wasn’t entirely sure how to define what Duo appeared to be feeling at the moment. Normally he wouldn’t consider it a matter of any concern, as long as it didn’t interfere with Duo’s recovery and subsequent mission performance, but he found in himself now an unprecedented curiosity about Duo’s mental state.
“All right,” Duo repeated at last. “My muscles are all burning, and I’m completely exhausted, and I have a headache, and I’m dizzy, and I feel like I can’t catch my breath. Oh, and the backs of my arms and thighs feel like they were actually burned.” This list of complaints was delivered with such incongruous cheer that it might have been a list of reasons he was having a wonderful day. “What…” And the frown that followed his smile was no more than puzzled, seemed to hold no real unhappiness. “What actually happened?”
“It appeared one of your charges went off prematurely,” Heero replied, “and you were thrown against a wall. It must have been a serious shock to your body. Your heartrate was so erratic and weak that I could barely detect it, and you had no significant respiration.”
“Wow!” Duo looked surprised and impressed, and still sounded perfectly sanguine. “Who knew I sucked so bad at setting charges?”
“It may have been faulty.” Heero experienced a touch of surprise of his own as he said this, for he wasn’t usually given to seeking extenuating circumstance to justify past failure. What was done was done. But somehow it seemed undesirable to hear Duo claim that he ‘sucked so bad’ at something, especially something at which he had demonstrated sufficient expertise in the past.
Mirroring Heero’s at this statement, Duo’s surprise evidently grew a trifle. It seemed he too was unaccustomed to having Heero make such a deviation from his usual unrelenting practicality. And was he pleased by it as well? Why should that be? In any case, all he said was, “I’m lucky as hell the stupid thing went off when I was far enough away from it for it not to just kill me.” At Heero’s nod of agreement he went on, “The whole thing was really lucky, I guess. Lucky everything turned out the way it did… lucky you were there…”
Again Heero nodded, less certainly this time. He didn’t know that he believed in luck. Things had worked out better than they could have, though.
Slowly, as if continuing to test his muscles and find them smarting from that brief period of poor circulation, Duo raised his arms in a cautious motion to put hands behind his head in a pose that would normally appear casual and unconcerned. He yet seemed inordinately satisfied, as if things had worked out more than merely ‘better than they could have’ — which still didn’t entirely make sense, which still worried Heero a trifle. Why were Duo’s eyes fixed on him with such apparent pleasure? At least they were focused and unclouded eyes. What was the meaning of that faint smile on Duo’s lips, which looked so out of place beneath the discomfort evinced by his contracted brows? At least his facial muscles all seemed to be functioning properly.
Only after approximately one hundred and eighty seconds of the two young men staring wordlessly — Heero attempting to dissect Duo’s emotional state and determine whether it indicated cerebral damage, Duo conducting whatever mysterious thoughts were contributing to his bright eyes and inscrutable smile — did Duo ask, “So what’s next?” They each seemed to have fallen into a sort of reverie focused on the other, and from this Heero now shook himself.
He had no way to assess definitively the current state of Duo’s brain. He could only work from symptoms — and as yet there were none of neurological disorder, however contradictory it might be that Duo appeared so generally happy after coming so close to death. He glanced at the time. “Response to calls for help from the base could arrive as early as ninety minutes from now. That’s based on the location of their closest allies and the assumption that none of them were already en route for any reason. I would prefer to leave the area in forty-five minutes.” Actually he would have preferred to leave the area as soon as the mission was complete, but was providing Duo with the estimated maximum period he had to lie here and recover.
“Got it.” Now Duo removed his arms from where they’d been pillowing his head, still with the same gingerly motion as before. He rolled his shoulders slowly, extending his arms first upward, then out to the sides, flexing his hands as he did so. Since piloting a gundam, though it was taxing to the entire body, required the most from these particular organs, it was no surprise to see Duo trying to prepare them, in the time he had, for getting out of here in forty-five minutes. What might have been a surprise was that he still looked so cheerfully pensive as he did it.
Finally Duo broke the silence again with the perfectly conversational remark, “You know I’m not afraid of dying… not even a little bit.”
Heero believed it with certainty. The same held true for him, though he felt that the lack of fear each of them had was of a different composition, had different origins, said something different about the character of each. Deeper into this he did not have the capacity to probe, so he merely nodded.
“Actually it’ll probably be pretty cool,” Duo went on, continuing his stretching motions. “The next really big mission, you know?”
“That seems possible,” Heero allowed.
“But I’m still glad I didn’t die.”
It took no significant restraint for Heero not to reply that he, too, was glad — but the impulse to say it was distinctly present. He wondered whether mere pleasure at not having died was the explanation for Duo’s current mood.
“I feel like I’ve got lots of stuff to do.”
“There’s a lot for all of us to do.” In this Heero was both agreeing with Duo and echoing a sentiment he’d heard J express. “Probably more than any of us have time for.”
“Yep.” Duo seemed unperturbed by the grim idea. “Lots to do for probably a hopeless cause.” White teeth flashed in an open grin. “Good thing the work’s fun, huh?”
And there Duo had locked himself up in a sanctuary Heero could not enter, and one that, at the moment, he had no energy to assault. Already struggling with puzzlement regarding Duo’s inexplicable cheer, Heero didn’t need the added agitation of the old ‘trying to figure out what fun is’ problem. And though there was at the moment a strange combination of drive to know and indifference — he wanted to understand what Duo considered ‘fun’ about the work they did, how he felt in circumstances like this and why, but at the same time found the entire thing irrelevant enough to himself as to be almost tiresome to consider — neither desire nor disinterest motivated him at the moment: it was merely that he already had enough to think about.
This attitude was, he found, practical, for clues to neither Duo’s current frame of mind nor his concept of fun were forthcoming during the next half hour, which was all the time Heero had to spend in his company right now and certainly not enough to give him answers. And perhaps he did believe in luck after all, since he considered it lucky or something like it that answers were not what he needed or sought. It was a little odd that he even wanted them.
As they broke camp and prepared to go their separate ways, to report their success to and receive further instructions from their disparate commands, Heero watched Duo’s movements carefully. He should have been convinced by them that there would be no danger in leaving the other pilot unsupervised, but there was some last little percentage of conviction that seemed impossible for him to obtain. Perhaps it was because he knew how easily the fragile human body could suffer invisible damage, and how foolish it would be for Duo to die or suffer other permanent ill consequences after the successful conclusion of a mission due to a simple lack of proper medical care.
So as Duo headed for the cockpit of Deathscythe high above and separation from Heero for a length of time neither of them could guess, his movements still apparently a bit uncomfortable, Heero held him back for a moment with the serious admonition, “Be sure to have some scans run. We don’t know what kind of internal damage that shock may have done.”
Duo, hand still on the cable that would draw him upward and away as soon as he initiated its retraction, turned toward Heero, this time with an expression that looked somewhat annoyed or frustrated. “You know I was planning to make you go out to lunch with me after we were done?” He grunted in irritation. “Nothing like a near-death experience to mess up your hopes of marinara sauce, huh?”
Taken aback by what seemed an almost completely irrelevant response, and not as ready as he might have been with a statement that this proposal wouldn’t have been practicable even without the near-death experience, Heero said nothing.
“The point is,” Duo explained, leveling one finger at Heero almost accusingly, “I already said I had lots of stuff to get done.”
Thinking he understood and therefore giving a nod of acknowledgment, Heero replied, “Just remember we can’t go out to lunch if you die of a skull fracture you could have caught with one radiograph.”
Duo’s thwarted expression turned into a grin. “Roger that.” And he ascended.
As Heero followed suit, he wondered just how seriously Duo had taken his advice. Adding this to his curiosity about Duo’s frame of mind and the strange looks he’d been giving Heero, Duo’s state of health and the possible results of today’s injury, why Heero was so unexpectedly interested in all of this, and whether or not he’d just agreed to go out to lunch at some point, he came up with a package of unusual inquisitiveness that was probably better not opened today, if ever at all. It was easier to enter his own gundam, fire it up, exchange a brief confirmation of departure/goodbye with his fellow pilot, and flee the area without wondering any more about any of it right now.
*
Duo didn’t much like these underground bases with their claustrophobic little corridors. There wasn’t room for a gundam’s foot, let alone to swing a twelve-meter scythe. To destroy a place like this he had to run in on his own legs, usually shooting a number of people on the way, and set a bunch of charges.
Of course, when Heero had the same mission, there was the option of having him blast at the place from outside with his beam cannon while Duo guarded his back against a horde of defenders… but Heero didn’t seem to think that sounded nearly as fun as Duo did, and there was always the possibility that the result would be a field of melty slag atop a series of untouched inner rooms and hallways too deep for the cannon to reach. So running and shooting and charges it was.
Not that there wasn’t a huge rush associated with meeting Heero again outside the base after a heart-pounding, gunfire-punctuated twenty minutes apart, taking cover in the brush, and counting down to a simultaneous activation of detonators. But heated gundam battles were always exciting. Heero was all about strategy and proportional expenditure of energy, though.
Today’s expenditure of energy went quite smoothly. These folks were pretty well trained, but they weren’t ready for a couple of gundam pilots. Quite a few of them were even smart enough to run, and Duo mostly let them go; the focus here was the facilities, the equipment, more than the personnel. Some heavy explosions would take care of that, and, though that probably wouldn’t be as fun as a mobile suits battle, maybe he could then convince Heero to go get some lunch with him somewhere afterwards.
With that happy thought, he dealt with obstructions, set his charges, checked with Heero (who was also just leaving), and headed out. Noodles, he thought, sounded good. Something with marinara sauce.
Only then something (something without marinara sauce) exploded. It wasn’t time yet, and he could swear he’d set them up correctly, but something exploded anyway. As was not infrequently the case when explosions were involved, he wasn’t entirely certain what happened next. There was heat and whooshing and pain, and he thought abrupt full-body contact with a wall might have been involved; but then everything went black.
Fortunately, the confusion didn’t last long. At least, it seemed like only a moment or two later that Duo was climbing to his feet with no difficulty. The explosion didn’t appear to have progressed considerably… in fact, the whole world seemed to have slowed down, which was a little strange. So was the realization that, although he had stood up, he was also still lying at the base of the wall, looking rather the worse for wear. Why did there seem to be two of him all of a sudden?
Listening to Heero’s voice over his communicator demanding to know what had happened and whether he was injured, the sound even smaller and more distant than it should have been from where Duo was (for lack of a better word) standing, he stared down at himself in some puzzlement. Not a great deal of puzzlement, though; it didn’t seem to matter all that much why his body and his primary area of consciousness suddenly weren’t occupying the same space the way they normally did.
Even when the explosion had passed and left only small lingering fires in its wake, and the sound of feet in the nearby corridor heralded the advent of Heero; even when Heero, completely ignoring Duo and, in fact, apparently running directly through him and out the other side so that Duo had to spin around to continue watching him… even then, all Duo had to say was a mildly interested, “Huh.” And he might have been surprised at the serenity of his tone if he hadn’t suddenly felt so very calm. “Weird.”
INDEED, came a voice from beside him. It was an odd and interesting voice; in fact, it was more interesting than the events in front of him, and Duo rather liked it. And when he turned to find its source, he liked what he saw even more.
The figure that now stood next to him where none had been a moment before was unnaturally tall, but somehow it didn’t really look unnatural — especially since the excessive height was compensated for by an excessive narrowness: despite the great length of the deep black robe, hood drawn low over the face, that shrouded the entire shape, it was clear there wasn’t a lot of room inside. And then there was the totally fleshless hand that emerged from one black sleeve to clutch the smooth haft of a great scythe even taller than the figure itself.
Duo couldn’t decide whether he liked the bony hand or the bright edge of the weapon best… or maybe it was the figure as a whole. Perhaps it was a little odd, especially in the apparent context, but he was definitely reacting positively to what he saw. He might even go so far as to say he was delighted… except that nothing he felt at the moment was quite strong enough for such a word.
“So you do exist,” he said. There was a touch of admiration to his tone, but even this seemed to have faded into placidity.
TODAY I DO, replied the figure. TOMORROW I MAY NOT.
Trying to reconcile the uncanny voice he didn’t quite seem to be hearing, as he understood the action, Duo shook his head, found the motion similarly uncanny for its lack of physical sensation, and gave up. “Tomorrow I may not,” he pointed out instead.
OH, YOU WILL CONTINUE TO EXIST, the voice from beneath the hood assured him. A bony hand — the one not holding the scythe — flicked toward where Heero was assessing the level of injury to Duo’s limp figure. BUT POSSIBLY NOT IN THIS FORM. Then the fleshless fingers gestured back in the direction of the swaying cloak that presumably enveloped an even more extensive set of bones. I, HOWEVER, MAY NO LONGER EXIST IN THIS WORLD BY THE TIME YOUR PERCEPTION OF TIME HAS ADVANCED TO WHAT YOU CONSIDER “TOMORROW.”
Duo had been planning on asking in what form he would exist tomorrow, if not this one, but was distracted by what seemed a greater issue. “How can you not exist?” he wondered. “Aren’t you sorta… universal? You know you’ve kinda been my hobby for half my life… I’ve more or less named myself after you…” He finished up where he’d started: “How can you not exist?”
With a clattering noise, off-white phalanges and metacarpals drummed pensively against the black haft of the scythe as their owner seemed to consider, in the darkness of his hood, how to answer this question. Finally the strange voice said, DEATH IS UNIVERSAL, YES, BUT THE PRESENCE OF AN ANTHROPOMORPHIZED REPRESENTATION OF THE PROCESS MAY BE AFFECTED BY THE SKEPTICISM LEVELS IN A GIVEN UNIVERSE. THIS WORLD HAS LACKED A DISTINCT ANTHROPOMORPHIZATION FOR SEVERAL OF YOUR CENTURIES.
Duo wasn’t quite sure he got it, but one fact stood out. “So you come from another world.”
The upper portion of the hooded form moved forward slightly in what Duo read as a nod. MY PRIMARY PERSONIFICATION TOOK PLACE IN A DIFFERENT CONTINUUM. BUT BECAUSE MY VISUAL MANIFESTATION CORRESPONDS SO CLOSELY WITH CERTAIN TRADITIONAL IMAGERY ASSOCIATED WITH DEATH IN A SUFFICIENT PERCENTAGE OF YOUR POPULATION, I HAVE BEEN TEMPORARILY ENGAGED TO TEST THE RECEPTIVENESS OF THIS WORLD TO THE REINSTATEMENT OF A PERSONIFICATION.
Duo raised a hand to scratch at the back of his head, unsatisfying as the gesture was. “So… you’re doing a sort of… working interview?”
The tall figure was perfectly still for a moment, as if considering — perhaps searching an impossibly long memory for the phrase in question and deciding whether it fit. Finally, YOU COULD SAY THAT, the sepulchral voice allowed. BUT I BELIEVE “ANTIGEN” MIGHT BE A BETTER TERM. THE RESULT OF A POSITIVE ASSESSMENT IS LIKELY TO BE THAT THIS WORLD REACTS TO MY DEPARTURE BY REGENERATING ITS OWN PERSONIFICATION OF DEATH.
“And where would that come from?” Duo wondered, extremely interested; intellectual processes, though largely divorced from emotion, seemed still intact. “Just out of nowhere? Or could it be, maybe, a person who already existed who happened to have died? Maybe someone who always believed in Death even more than he believed in God?”
The hooded head turned specifically toward him for the first time, and Duo definitely made out the gleam of blue eyes in the darkness. He met the gaze without fear, and not merely because fear seemed irrelevant here and now; his interest facilitated his confidence. He met the gaze that seemed to be reading him — looking, perhaps, into his past, seeking out the truth of his words and the qualifications he’d been hinting at — and in his turn he read.
He saw a spirit that wanted to understand humanity, perhaps even wanted to join it, but thought — even feared — it never could. He saw a mind that believed itself entirely separate from emotion — not in disdainful aloofness, considering itself exalted into logic and above emotion, but in something much more like naiveté. The Order Of Things was all this being knew… or, at least, The Order Of Things was all that had ever been taught, which had led to an understanding at once supernaturally deep and pitifully shallow.
And yet this was a being that desired, that believed, that feared. Duo thought it was a being that knew joy and sorrow and love… but probably did not begin to understand them, or perhaps even to recognize their presence. It was captivatingly pathetic… instantly endearing… or would have been if pity and fondness hadn’t been so muffled and distant at the moment.
Duo was the first to blink. Of course he was pretty sure there weren’t eyelids in the shadow beneath the hood, and his own remembered need to periodically shutter his eyeballs did him a disservice. He wasn’t cowed, however; rather, he was wondering at the detail of his own assessment. Was he making things up? Or, if it was true, how did he think he knew all of that?
Then, with a jolt — or what might have been a jolt back on the other side — he realized abruptly that this wasn’t the first time he’d looked into blue eyes and seen that kind of spirit, that kind of mind.
It seemed ironic, somehow, that, when Duo was the one to claim for himself the title of God of Death, this actual specter of Death should remind him more of–
I CAN MENTION YOUR NAME, the figure said at last.
Letting go, for now, of his previous thoughts, Duo said in relative heartiness, “Thanks!”
DON’T MENTION IT. And the dark form turned back to its apparent scrutiny of Heero performing CPCR on Duo’s body.
Duo followed the line of focus and watched as his fellow pilot tried to bring him back. “But I’m already dead, right?” he wondered aloud. He really should have been experiencing a greater level of concern about this, but just couldn’t seem to muster it.
TECHNICALLY, said the hooded figure. FOR THE MOMENT. BUT THIS FRANTIC YOUNG MAN MAY BE ABLE TO RESUSCITATE YOU.
From somewhere in the currently hazy center of Duo’s mind where he cared about what went on in life, he was informed that, on that side of things, it would be very significant to him that the usually implacable Heero was so frantic in his attempts to revive Duo — that he appeared, as he compressed Duo’s chest, to be experiencing real desperation and terror… emotions he perhaps did not comprehend or even recognize. At the moment, ‘here,’ this only almost mattered, almost meant something. Some emotion on the life side wasn’t quite developed enough to reach into Duo’s placid state of death. He wondered whether that would change if he went back; he wondered how qualified he was to judge anyone’s emotionality when he was in such an uncertain condition himself.
The likelihood of going back seemed, he thought, fairly good. Anything Heero knew how to do he knew how to do perfectly, and first aid was no exception. And Duo’s body didn’t seem to have been too desperately damaged, only given a pretty hard shock.
He felt this theory confirmed when the figure at his side presently remarked, THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES, BUT CONSIDER YOURSELF UNDER OBSERVATION FROM NOW ON.
“Sweet,” said Duo.
The robed form turned toward him again, this time in a movement that seemed slightly puzzled. EVEN ALLOWING FOR A PSYCHOLOGICAL PERCEPTION OF FLAVOR, I SHOULD THINK THERE IS NOTHING TO TASTE AT THE MOMENT.
“Oh, sorry,” Duo grinned. “I mean, that’s good. I like that.”
AH, OF COURSE. A SLANG EXPRESSION. He said this in a tone that suggested he was filing the term away for future reference or perhaps use. Then he turned back toward the living scene — where, Duo noticed, Heero seemed to have calmed down a bit, though he hadn’t quite returned yet to his usual stoniness.
Simultaneously, Duo was aware of a sudden increase to a sensation that had previously been so sluggish as to go largely unnoticed. If he’d had to describe it (and for one pointless instant he was considering how to), he would have said it felt as if something in his chest, fluttering only feebly before, had abruptly resumed a stronger rhythmic movement by which it was forcing some kind of fluid to circulate throughout his entire body. And being currently disembodied made this very strange. Actually, the fact that he found it very strange was, compared with his previous lack of concern, rather strange. “Am I going back?”
IT WOULD APPEAR SO. YOU WON’T REMEMBER ANY OF THIS, NATURALLY.
“What?” The startled Duo began to turn. “But then how can I–” But at that moment, once again, everything went black.
So, yeah, surprise crossover here, in the form of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Death. Canon crossovers are not something in which I typically indulge (as a matter of fact, this’ll be the first one around this place), but I think it works well enough here. As a matter of fact, I kiiinda freaked out with joy when I thought of that Heero/Death comparison.
Heretic's Reward Title art by Miradella
"Sooner or later, whoever's behind the usurpation will have to make some kind of 'divine' display affirming his claim to the throne... Having my own source of miracles will even the playing field somewhat."
It often took the entire walk home for Sano’s hair to dry, but that did rather depend on the weather. During this transition between summer and autumn, provided the rain hadn’t started, by the time he’d reached the crossroads it was already at that itchy stage where any lingering moisture felt like sweat instead of the remains of a bath. He hated that stage, especially when he was already a little annoyed, but scratching his head or running his hands through his hair would only necessitate another bath sooner than if he didn’t, so he kept them clamped tightly around the straps of his backpack to prevent it.
A distraction from his irritated thoughts was not at all unwelcome, which was probably the only reason he even noticed the sound of running feet as he neared the crossroad — bare feet, apparently, approaching him up the perpendicular way, which the trees currently blocked mostly from view. He paused, waiting to see what entertainment the Torosa Forest Road would afford him today, watching what little he could make out through the corner of foliage. Something grey flashed past, and a figure came hurtling around the bend onto his road, where it promptly ran right into him.
It wasn’t a proper, solid collision, but rather more of a ricochet; a shoulder made contact with Sano’s ribcage, sending the figure spinning off behind him and falling awkwardly to the ground. And once it was still, Sano, turning, saw a shoeless boy in an overlarge, frayed shiiya that was missing a sleeve.
“You all right, kid?” Sano reached out a hand to help the boy up. “What’s your hurry?”
Instead of accepting the assistance, the boy looked him over quickly with eyes that widened perceptibly at something he saw, then scrambled backward and to his feet. With one last nervous glance at Sano, he turned and dashed off the road into the trees, where he quickly disappeared.
“Huh,” said Sano.
If it hadn’t been evident from the kid’s demeanor that he was being pursued, the sound of more running feet and hard breathing from around the bend would have confirmed it. Sano turned back toward the crossing and waited. Presently a pair of devoted, a man and a woman in mismatched pants and red shiiyao bearing the black and purple lotus emblem, came hurrying into view and stopped in front of him. The man, evidently pleased at the momentary pause in their progress, bent over, rubbing at his side and panting.
The woman, forward of her companion and not as badly winded, looked quickly around at the road in both directions and the surrounding trees, then at Sano. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she caught sight of the heretical device on his chest. “Did you see the boy?” she demanded abruptly. “Where did he go?”
“Dunno,” Sano shrugged. He then added in the mildest tone he could command, “I’m blind.”
The second devoted, slowly standing upright again, looked at Sano in greater interest. “Blind?” he echoed.
Still hanging onto his straight face, Sano replied, “That’s what you devoted are always telling me, anyway.”
The woman’s brows lowered, and one of her hands formed a fist “Are you getting fresh with us, heretic?”
“Come on.” The man stepped quickly forward, reaching for the woman’s arm to pull at and restrain her. “We don’t have time for this.”
Sano ignored this relatively pacific statement and responded instead to the woman’s threatening question. “And if I am? What are you gonna do about it?” He couldn’t help grinning a bit as he laid his hand on the hilt of the keonblade at his side. Baiting religious folk was just so much fun.
“We don’t want any trouble,” the man insisted.
The woman was also ignoring her companion. Seeing Sano’s motion and the small sword he wore, she rolled her eyes and commented derisively, “As if a heretic could ever hope to fight with a spiritual weapon.”
“Please,” said the man loudly, clapping an emphatic hand on the woman’s shoulder and looking across it at Sano with a weary expression. “Master, we really don’t want any trouble; we just need to find that kid.”
For a long moment Sano contemplated telling both of them to go fuck themselves, but eventually decided against it. The man hadn’t been so bad, after all; besides, if Sano didn’t send them off wrong, they might accidentally go the right direction. “He ran off that way,” he finally said, pointing up the sloping road whence he’d come. “Looked pretty tired, too — nice of you guys to wear the poor kid out like that. You should have no problem catching him up if you hurry, unless he leaves the road.”
Without even acknowledging this ‘help,’ the woman turned and, towing the man, headed off immediately the way Sano pointed. The man turned back toward Sano briefly and began, “Five times…” Then, realizing the semi-religious idiom probably wasn’t entirely appropriate, amended, “Well, thank you.” After which he moved quickly to fall in beside his companion. Before they were out of sight or earshot, Sano heard him asking, “Why do you have to be so belligerent?”
“Why do you have to be so soft?” retorted she. “Heretics need to be put in their place.” And she broke into a run. Soon they had both disappeared around a curve in the road.
Sano looked after them for nearly a minute, making sure they weren’t coming back, before he turned and studied the nearby foliage. He thought he could make out a spot of pale grey among the greens and browns, and waved slowly at it. “All right, kid, you can come out… They’re ’round the bend by now; they won’t hear us talking back here.”
The grey patch moved and grew, and became the undyed clothing on the small frame of the boy. Hesitantly he emerged through the bushes, peered up the road, then turned suspicious eyes back on Sano. “Why’d you do that?” he wondered. “They might have rewarded you.”
Sano made a derisive sound. “They wouldn’t have given me nothing.” He grinned darkly as he added, “Besides, I like messing with devoted.”
The boy was studying him from head to toe again, still appearing a little uncomfortable. “Because you’re a heretic, right?”
“Right,” nodded Sano.
“Me too,” said the boy quickly, withdrawing his gaze from Sano — most particularly from Sano’s chest and the emblem thereupon — and looking around again.
“Oh, really? You look a little young to have decided that.” Falling into a crouch, which put him just below the boy’s eye-level, Sano returned the favor of precise examination. The kid’s black hair was shorn shaggily close to his head, which couldn’t possibly make him many friends wherever he went, and he was probably around ten years old. The shiiya he wore had obviously been made for an adult, for it extended all the way down past his knees, and the one remaining sleeve hung almost as far. He had a somewhat skittish demeanor that matched the nervous expression and the continually shifting red eyes.
In response to Sano’s statement, the boy fixed him with a direct glare. “Don’t talk to me like I’m young and you’re old.”
“Well, how old are you?” wondered Sano, amused.
“Eleven!”
Sano poked him in the chest teasingly. “You seem more like– Sweet Kaoru, you’re scrawny!” Because he really shouldn’t have been able to feel ribs quite so prominently with just a little poke like that.
The boy scowled, and so did Sano. Pulling his backpack off one shoulder, Sano fished through it with the opposite hand. As it was nearly empty, this being the end of the weekend, he easily found what he sought. “Eat this quick before you drop dead!” he said, handing an apple to the boy. The latter couldn’t quite hide a covetous widening of eyes and intake of breath as he reached out to accept. No surprise there: he probably hadn’t eaten in days.
Sano stood straight again, readjusting the backpack straps and rolling his shoulders. “And you better come this way,” he said, “in case those devoted come back.” The boy, already three huge bites into the apple, now followed him without hesitation.
They walked in silence for a while as the kid devoured the apple down to the narrowest core, at which he still looked rather wistfully before he hefted it out into the trees beyond the edge of the road. Watching him almost made Sano hungry, and reminded him very much of his own eleven-year-old days.
“So what’d you steal?” he asked at last, tossing the second apple he’d retrieved from his pack into the air and catching it.
“What?” The boy’s eyes followed the flying object like a predator its prey.
“I ain’t stupid, kid.” Sano let the apple go motionless in his hand in the hopes of commanding a greater share of the boy’s attention. “Those were Tomoe devoted, and the closest Tomoe shrine’s in Egato. No way would they chase you this far just for a heretic hunt.” Ladies knew the devoted liked a good heretic hunt, though; that woman he’d met just now had been a classic example. Whatever the kid had stolen from them had probably been a welcome excuse for them to harry him halfway around Torosa.
“It…” The boy’s eyes lingered for a moment on the now-stationary apple before turning away entirely. “It was just… some food.”
The kid seemed so uncomfortable about this that Sano, wanting to put him at ease, replied immediately and heartily, “Well, I can’t blame you for that! I did my share of it when I was a kid.” He held out the apple. “Here, have another.” And, as he watched the boy tear into it with just as much enthusiasm as the first, he added thoughtfully, “Tomoe knows a shrine’s the best place to steal food from.”
“You know,” said the boy, his tone solemn despite his mouth being full, “the ladies don’t like it much when you keep throwing around their names like that.”
Sano stared at him for a second, amazed at the serious straight face and the somber voice. Then he burst out laughing. “You sound just like a devoted!”
The boy smiled sheepishly at him before returning his attention to the apple.
Sano reached out and ruffled the kid’s scraggly hair. “I like you!” he declared. “What’s your name?”
“Yahiko,” said the boy without looking up.
“I’m Sano. You need a place to stay for the night?”
Now Yahiko did look up, but only with his eyes; it was a glance to which all the suspicion and nervousness had returned. “Yeah…” he said cautiously, and the tone was almost more that of a question.
“Well, you got one. I don’t own much, so I won’t worry about you robbing me, and there’s good work around here if you wanna make some honest money before you run off wherever.” He tapped the white teardrop on his chest knowingly as he added, “They even hire heretics.”
“Uh, thanks,” mumbled Yahiko reluctantly, then fell silent. He stared at his mostly eaten apple, and made his way through the last few bites with an unprecedented slowness. Finally he ventured, “Um… you’re not thinking I’m…” He was looking sidelong at Sano again, with just his uncertain eyes. “I’m not gonna have to, uh… ‘pay’ you for this, am I?”
Sano shrugged. “Well, if you have any…” But he trailed off as the particular tone Yahiko had used belatedly struck him. “You mean…” For a moment he went wordless as shock and outrage filled him.
Yahiko was studiously watching the passing trees on the side of the road opposite Sano, and said nothing to confirm the half-voiced guess. What in the world had this kid been through? How often had he been expected to ‘pay’ for things in the manner Sano was fairly certain he meant? It seemed obvious, however, that Yahiko would rather not discuss the matter with a complete stranger, and with this in mind Sano forced himself to finish his statement as casually as possible. “Nah, I like older men.”
“I like girls,” Yahiko said in a very small voice, still not looking over.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Sano said, far more jovially than he felt, clapping the kid on the shoulder. But the outrage was still present, and needed some expression, lest it force itself into the open in some inappropriate fashion. “But if anyone you don’t like comes bugging you like that,” he added, drawing his sword and letting the energy blade flash long and bright with the strength of his anger, “you just let me know.”
For the first instant, Yahiko had shied visibly away from him and looked like he might be about to bolt again. But as he took in Sano’s words and saw the weapon in his hand, his face broke into an animated smile. “You’re a keonmaster?”
Through Sano’s head rang immediately the voice of that damned devoted woman just now: “As if a heretic could ever hope to fight with a spiritual weapon.” He scowled a bit as he let the energy blade recede and resheathed the short sword. “Well, not exactly a master yet…” he admitted.
“My dad was, back when he was alive,” said Yahiko enthusiastically. “He was really good.”
“Did he teach you any moves or anything?”
“Only a little.”
“I was actually on my way back from my trainer’s when you ran into me today,” Sano said with some enthusiasm of his own. “If you stick around all week, I can take you up to his house. I usually stay up there on weekends.” But no sooner were these words out of his mouth than he realized everything that could potentially go wrong in that scenario. “Though… well…” He felt himself blushing slightly as he backtracked. “Maybe that’s not the best idea… He’s this grouchy old… well, older guy, and, well…”
The town had been growing larger and more visible before them for a while now, and their emergence from the trees was a very welcome occurrence. In the light of the setting sun it looked very homey and welcoming, Sano thought… though that might merely have been because of the potential change of subject it provided. He cleared his throat and gestured. “This is Eloma, by the way — in case you didn’t know where you were.”
Yahiko, evidently sufficiently distracted from Sano’s awkward lack of real explanation, looked first at the town and then behind them somewhat anxiously. “What if the devoted come here looking for me? Wouldn’t it be better if nobody saw me with you?”
“You pissed them off that bad?” Sano was impressed. “Nice work!”
Again Yahiko smiled sheepishly, and said nothing.
“Everybody in a town this size knows everything right after it happens no matter what you do anyway, though,” Sano went on, “so it’s no use hiding. But if anyone comes after you, I’ll deal with them.”
With an uncertain nod, Yahiko accompanied Sano over the irrigation bridge into town. He seemed to loosen up a trifle as he saw the villagers going about their usual tasks without taking any notice of them except to offer the occasional more or less amiable greeting. Sano waved at some friends where they sat under the roof of the inn, and stopped briefly to pet one of the local dogs, but otherwise had little interaction with anyone as they progressed — and this seemed to comfort Yahiko somewhat.
“And here we are,” Sano announced cheerfully as they approached his house in the southeastern corner of the town’s center. “Ain’t much, but it’s close to the orchards I usually work, and it’s really mine since I won the deed fair and square at chips.” He was still rather pleased with himself for that, and just couldn’t help mentioning it.
Yahiko didn’t seem impressed. “No, it really… ain’t much…” he murmured in something like horror. Sano was neither surprised nor particularly disturbed by this, and grinned as he fished out the key to his front door to let them in.
Inside, he managed to locate his fire-starter with only a little trouble in the dark, and lit the candle on the table. “There should be some clean water out back, if someone hasn’t thrown something in it,” he told Yahiko, gesturing at the back door, “if you want to wash up or anything.”
Yahiko was looking around at the small single room. “Oh, yeah… thanks…” he said a little absently, and moved toward the door.
“You still hungry?” wondered Sano as he removed his backpack and tossed it carelessly onto the bed.
“Yeah,” Yahiko replied, in a tone suggesting he didn’t want to ask for more food but was indeed very hungry. He was fumbling with the door, and managed to figure out both lock and latch after a few more moments.
Sano looked through his cabinet. “I got some bread…” He picked up the heavy half loaf, unwrapped it, and examined it on all sides. “Still looks good.”
“Thanks…” came Yahiko’s voice from just outside.
After setting the loaf down on its cloth wrap on the table and laying his knife beside it, Sano moved to the bed. He yanked the top blanket out from under his backpack and brought it to his face, inhaling deeply.
“There’s not much water here,” Yahiko called in to him.
“Is it enough?” asked Sano.
“Yeah, if you don’t mind me using all of it.”
“Go ahead. Probably one of the neighbors was too lazy to go aaaalllll the way to the irrigation. I’ve done it.”
A faint laugh from Yahiko was followed by splashing.
Satisfied that his blanket didn’t smell too terribly bad to be offered to his guest, Sano tossed it onto the rug that lay before the fireplace, and sent his pillow to follow. Then he bent to unlace his boots.
Bare to the waist, shaggy hair dripping, Yahiko reentered the room as Sano was removing his shiiya and stuffing it into the cabinet. Sano looked at him and noted not only just how scrawny he really was but also that his pants were belted with a length of string. Instead of commenting on this, however, he said, “Man, they had to practically tie me up and throw me in the river to get me to clean up when I was your age.”
Yahiko grinned. “But you weren’t on the run, were you?”
Sano returned the grin and shrugged. “Well, no, I guess not.” Turning back to the cabinet, he reached in and brought out the old, much-patched shiiya he only kept around these days as a backup. “Here, why don’t you wear this to sleep in. Yours looks like it could use a break.”
“Thanks,” said Yahiko, and pulled the garment over his head. Then, spreading his arms out and looking down at it, he remarked a little skeptically, “This… isn’t much better than mine.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty beat up, I know.” Sitting down on the bed again after making sure the back door was securely closed, Sano yawned. “It took me a while to save up for the red one,” he went on, “and meanwhile I never bothered much about that one. Then I had to find someone who didn’t think they’d be damned if they made me a new one with a heretic symbol on it.” And it still hadn’t turned out quite the same red as the devoted shiiyao… but that was a minor complaint.
“People seem to like you here, though,” Yahiko said.
“It’s ’cause I kinda grew up here, so they liked me already before I turned heretic. You should see how people from out of town look at me. But you’re probably already starting to get that, huh?”
Yahiko hesitated a moment before agreeing.
“Well, I gotta work in the morning,” Sano said as he lay back, “so I’m going to sleep.” He reached out a foot past the end of the bed to point at the rug and its fresh dressings. “I made a ‘bed’ for you, see? Not very nice, but probably better than sleeping outside on the bare ground, right?”
From where he’d been looking at the bread on the table, Yahiko turned to see what Sano was indicating. “Right,” he said, with no trace of discontent. “Thanks.”
Pillowing his head on his arm and pulling the remaining blanket up to his shoulder, Sano turned to face the wall as he said, “Stop thanking me, kid. We heretics gotta stick together, you know?” He yawned again. “So just help yourself to that bread, and put the candle out when you’re done, all right?”
“Sure,” said Yahiko.
A long period of quiet followed during which Sano, drifting toward sleep, hoped Yahiko ate as much bread as he wanted. But after a few minutes, Yahiko said softly, irresolutely, “Hey, Sano…”
“Yeah?”
Even more uncertainly, “Are you really a heretic?” Yahiko asked.
“What else would I be?” wondered Sano, a little surprised at the question.
“I mean, you really don’t believe the same things other people do about the ladies?”
“I don’t believe in the ladies at all, kid; it’s pretty simple.”
“Well,” Yahiko said in a sort of shrugging tone that seemed to imply this wasn’t actually all that important, “I know some heretics don’t really think about it at all… they just use being a heretic as a…” But he didn’t seem willing to complete that particular phrase.
“As an excuse to live like complete assholes?” Sano finished for him, turning slightly in the kid’s direction again. “I know. They make it hard on the ones of us who have real reasons not to believe.”
“What are your real reasons?” Though Yahiko asked quietly, Sano thought there was a certain eagerness to his tone that hadn’t been there before.
“Misao, kid, where did this come from?” Sano turned all the way over and propped himself up on an elbow to look at Yahiko in the shadows cast by the lone flame. “Aren’t you hungry and tired and shit? Haven’t you been chased all day?”
“Yeah, but…” Yahiko quickly faced the table again, as if reluctant to meet Sano’s gaze. “I’ve never met a real — another real heretic before, and I just want to…” He shrugged slightly.
“Yeah, well, we can talk about it tomorrow, all right?” Sano yawned again and subsided back into his previous position. “Not like there’s any hurry or anything.”
“Right,” agreed Yahiko quietly, and said nothing more.
When Sano got up the next morning just before dawn, the sight of the boy fast asleep curled under the blanket on the hearth rug made him pause. He couldn’t help reflecting that Yahiko was about the same age Outa would be if Outa had lived this long — not to mention about the same age Sano had been when he’d turned his back on the divine ladies, no matter what he’d said about Yahiko seeming a little too young to have made that decision. And if Sano hadn’t, almost entirely by luck, had a place to stay and a few people vaguely looking out for him back then, he’d have been running from everything just as Yahiko was now. Poor kid. What other hardships was he likely to encounter if he continued running?
Sano’s thoughts kept to this track throughout the day; orchard work didn’t demand much of the mental faculties, so he had plenty of opportunity to ponder how he might help Yahiko on a more long-term basis than just a few nights’ rest on his floor and some food. When he returned home, however, he found that all his planning was to come to nothing. For the little house was dark and quiet, and the only sign of a guest’s erstwhile presence was the single shining coin Yahiko had left on the table.
Like many provincial areas of Akomera, Eloma lived by the old calendar and the ten-day week. And though Sano hadn’t exactly forgotten the unfortunate Yahiko, he’d mostly stopped wondering if he would return by Gonhyou, the fifth day of the week that was by tradition only a half day of work. And by the time he headed back up the mountain on Hayohyou evening for his usual weekend training, he had relegated the kid’s visit to the mental area of unimportant past events.
Juhyou morning, Sano stood as he often did in the front room of his master’s house, both hands on his downward-pointed sword, attempting to keep the energy blade extended in the shape he wanted. As usual, it wasn’t working very well; including the thoughts in his own head, everything else in the world was just too interesting and distracting to allow him to concentrate on his spiritual energy and its release through his keonblade.
And the remark, “You’re up early,” from the doorway into the other room wasn’t likely to help much.
Sano acknowledged the truth of this with a single syllable and without opening his eyes. He might have remarked that, having awakened briefly at one point not long before, he hadn’t been able to get back to sleep with that snoring right in his ear — but he’d been thrown out of the house the last time he’d said something like that aloud.
“Why are you practicing that with the sword?” Seijuurou wondered next.
Pointedly not answering this question, Sano removed one hand from the weapon and gestured across the room. “I left you some breakfast.”
But Seijuurou was probably the stubbornest person Sano knew. “Why are you practicing with the sword?” he asked again. “I told you you have to master basic meditation first.”
Sano finally opened his eyes, dropping his meditative stance and glaring at the broad back of his keonmaster, who was now moving toward the table and the aforementioned breakfast. “Because what’s the point?” he demanded. “I still don’t see any connection between the stupid meditation and actual fighting!”
Seijuurou leaned across the table to push the windows’ shutters open and let in more of the morning light and the sound of the surrounding forest. “If you can’t concentrate on your purpose when you’re standing around doing nothing,” he said, “how do you hope to keep hold of it during battle?”
With a frustrated noise, Sano strode to the other set of windows, flung them open, and leaned on the shelf just beneath to look outside. “Stop talking about purpose already,” he grumbled.
“Yours isn’t strong enough,” said Seijuurou. “You never have more than a fleeting goal that only helps you fight for a short time.”
“I have plenty of goals!”
Now seated at the table and spreading preserves on a slice of bread, Seijuurou rolled his eyes. “You have nothing to live for,” he said severely, “so your purpose gets crushed by your awareness. You need more than just ‘wanting to kick ass.'”
Sensing already that Seijuurou was shifting into lecture mode, Sano sighed and, turning, leaned back against the shelf to listen, slapping his sword quietly and rhythmically against his empty hand somewhat impatiently as he did so.
“Awareness is essential to a regular swordsman,” said Seijuurou seriously, “but a keonmaster needs to balance it with purpose or he’ll never get anywhere.” He took a bite of his breakfast, chewed, and swallowed before continuing. “Let me put it this way: when you pay me to train you — which you do a good deal better than you actually train — you do so by letting me shove my cock into your ass, correct?” And, setting down his bread, he made a colorful descriptive hand gesture to accompany this introduction to his point.
“Uh… yeah…” Having not the faintest idea where Seijuurou might be going with this, Sano watched him warily.
“So think of your purpose as my cock,” Seijuurou went on, wiggling his finger. “It’s firm and unyielding, with a specific, undeviating aim. And your ass is the awareness — it’s malleable and encompassing, yet still technically solid. But they’re two distinct objects; your ass certainly would never overwhelm my cock, would it? So you must be aware of your situation without letting that overwhelm or distract you from your purpose, and your purpose must be unshakeable.”
For a long moment Sano simply gaped at him. Then he collapsed limply against the counter in a torrent of laughter. “That’s…” he gasped. “That’s the stupidest… fucking thing… I’ve ever heard!”
Eyes narrowed, Seijuurou rose imperiously from his seat and swept toward the door. “You’re never going to get it.”
“What?!” In Sano’s burst of annoyance at Seijuurou’s comment, the energy blade of his sword flashed out fully before sinking back to just above the length of the metal again.
Seijuurou paused in the act of opening the front door and looked over at Sano, gaze resting on the keonblade in his hand. “You see how your emotion only gives you power for a moment?” he said placidly. “You’re not an essentialist playing with fire… what you need is something lasting. You can’t count on a momentary surge of anger in battle.”
“I can’t really count on your cock in battle either.”
Despite the fact that Sano had muttered this retort, Seijuurou heard him and replied. “It would be better than what you’ve been working with so far. Now clean up those dishes and come outside.” And the door closed behind him.
Washing and putting away the breakfast things, searching for his shoes and belts, and getting ready for further practice outside were all carried out over a quiet stream of curses. Seijuurou was an unbelievable swordsman, and about as good in bed, but Sano couldn’t help thinking he wouldn’t be here if there were anyone else to teach him. Especially since he was pretty sure he’d barely improved since he’d started his training.
Outside, Seijuurou was pulling two longswords from where they hung on the wall under the roof, obviously intending a more standard spar, such as they often had, without any attempt at channeling spiritual energy at least for now. Sano, still irritated, muttered when he saw the regular swords, “Fuck those,” to no particular purpose.
“If you want to take the metaphor that far,” Seijuurou grinned, handing Sano his weapon.
With a frown Sano stared down at the hilt he now held, drawing only slowly. He was thinking again of the words of that devoted last week. It had been a shot in the dark on her part, and had hit closer to home than she’d probably had any idea. He’d been remembering it on and off ever since, the desire to bring it up to his master growing with each mental repetition of the woman’s statement. If he planned to ask at all this weekend, it needed to happen now.
“Someone… suggested…” he said slowly, “that the fact that I don’t believe in the divine ladies is why I can’t master this thing.”
Seijuurou, obviously aware that by ‘this thing’ Sano meant not the sword in his hand but keonmastery, said, “Nonsense.” He began moving away from the house to the open area where they usually practiced; Sano followed him. “All things divine are spiritual, but the reverse is not true. Your state of heresy is foolish, but it’s not what’s holding you back here.”
Sano might have believed, after so many years, he would have ceased being annoyed by phrases like ‘your state of heresy is foolish,’ but it hadn’t happened yet. “Maybe it’s that your explanations make no sense,” he said sourly, “whether you mention your stupid cock or not.”
Ignoring him completely, Seijuurou went on thoughtfully, “Though the two are probably not unrelated: the complete lack of control over your spiritual side that keeps you from keonmastery may have also been what caused you to become a heretic.”
Facing his trainer now across the little open space near the kiln, Sano tossed the sheath of his sword aside in continued annoyance and raised the weapon into a combative position. “People always talk about ‘becoming a heretic’ like it’s some big, unnatural change that happened because of something or other. As far as I can see, that’s a better description of you guys who believe in all the lady bullshit.”
His speech might as well have been internal for all Seijuurou reacted to it. Lazily the master drew his own sword, though he never bothered to adopt much of a stance of any kind when sparring with Sano. “Remember to regulate your force,” he advised.
Sano inhaled deeply, then exhaled in something that lay halfway between irritated sigh and preparatory controlled breathing. “Right.” And he attacked.
Seijuurou twisted neatly away from Sano’s initial thrust, stepped back to avoid the second, and remarked, “You’re doing it again.”
Sano plunged forward with a sweeping strike that he found once more dodged without any difficulty. At the same moment, Seijuurou’s sword grazed his arm slightly and very precisely, leaving a tiny line of blood like a bad paper cut. Sano hissed with surprise and pain and attacked again, but the next moment found himself stumbling over Seijuurou’s outthrust foot and crashing to the ground.
“Putting all of your strength into all of your attacks makes you extremely vulnerable,” Seijuurou reminded him for perhaps the millionth time.
Sano glared down at the cut on his arm and back up at his master before scrambling to his feet and throwing himself forward again with even more determination.
“You’re still doing it,” Seijuurou said after blocking or dodging a few more times.
“No, I’m–” Sano began to protest, but was cut off as Seijuurou slammed the hilt of his sword into Sano’s stomach. Doubled over, backing away, Sano coughed twice and scowled even more fiercely at Seijuurou.
“You’ve been studying with me for how long?” the latter was wondering disdainfully. “And still you can barely follow my instructions.”
Forcing himself to ignore the discomfort in his midsection and stand straight, Sano strode forward again, but found his assault immediately repelled. “That’s because–” he began, but Seijuurou cut him off.
“But you carry around a keonblade as if it’s going to do you some good in actual combat.” As he said this, he thrust his own weapon out over Sano’s shoulder in a clear indication that he could easily have beheaded him if he’d wanted to.
“Hey,” Sano protested, “I–“
Again Seijuurou interrupted as he effortlessly blocked Sano’s next few attempted hits. “You might as well exchange it for a regular sword — or, better yet, given your level of combat subtlety, a club.”
“What?!” Sano demanded, ready to toss the sword aside and fly at the man with his fists.
Seijuurou smiled faintly. “All right. Draw.”
Ah, yes. Of course. It had all just been aimed at getting Sano sufficiently angry to maintain an energy blade for enough time that he could use it to spar. “I fucking hate it when you do that!” he growled, driving the longsword into the ground and yanking his keonblade from its sheath. At least it worked, though; the blade flashed as he drew it, and extended to a workable length.
They fought. And though Seijuurou didn’t exactly put much more effort into it when Sano was fighting with an unbreakable translucent blade than he did when Sano held three feet of steel, he did at least seem to pay a little more attention. Sano’s inability to concentrate on his spiritual energy remained, however, so the spar didn’t last long. As Sano watched the blade shrink back to just a slight glow around the hilt, he muttered, “Shit.”
“One of these days,” Seijuurou said easily, “you’re really going to have to figure it out. I’m going to get bored of insulting you into results.”
“No, you’re not,” Sano contradicted him flatly. There were plenty of good reasons he needed to figure this out, but the very unlikely possibility that Seijuurou might tire of teasing him during training before that happened was not one of them.
“Well, maybe not,” Seijuurou grinned. “Let’s go have something to drink.”
Still swearing under his breath, Sano resheathed his keonblade and stalked after his master, heading back toward the house.
Seijuurou had been aware of the horsemen concealed in the trees as he’d passed, but they hadn’t seemed to care about him. There were only a few reasons for people to be hiding thus, waiting silently on either side of the road in a such a dense area of the forest, none of which he particularly liked, so he’d left the lane just after t
he next bend and made his way back quietly through the trees to keep an eye on things. He could simply have confronted them about their suspicious behavior, but was interested in seeing how the scene would play out if there turned out to be one.
Presently a wagon came lumbering around that same bend, loaded high with cargo and manned by a couple of relatively sturdy, middle-aged women whose conversation, though not particularly loud, would probably keep them from hearing anything from those that lay in wait until it was too late.
Such proved to be the case. Their horse came to an abrupt halt, jerking the equipage to a similarly precipitous stop, as the two others that had burst from the trees perpendicular to the road blocked the latter neatly by facing each other across it. A long moment of silence followed as the women watched the riders warily and the horsemen, completely ignoring the merchants, examined the wagon’s contents and construction with easy, pleased expressions. The sword in the hand of one and the other’s bent bow made their intentions clear.
The women, unable to produce weapons of their own for fear of being shot, shifted uneasily. “What do you want?” the driver finally demanded, her tone and bearing impressively unintimidated.
“Get down and walk away from the wagon.” The man gestured with his sword. “Just down the road a bit, where we can still see you.”
“And if we don’t care to?” replied the driver coolly.
“Then we’ll still take your wagon,” the second man said, tightening his drawn bowstring, “only you won’t walk away.”
The second woman murmured something to the first, whose grip on the reins slackened somewhat, but neither moved. “I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement,” the driver said.
The first bandit glanced at the second with an expression of feigned confusion. “Didn’t we just explain the agreement?”
“I think we did,” the second concurred seriously; he didn’t look away from his targets.
“My mistake,” said the woman with a tight smile.
“All is forgiven,” the bandit replied mockingly.
“I thought the king took care of all you Ayundomei bandits in this area,” the driver went on, almost conversationally.
“We’re new to the business,” answered the first man somewhat smugly.
“But you are from Ayundome?”
The bowman opened his mouth to answer this, but the swordsman cut him off. “That’s right! Born and raised in Celoho, but we heard there was easy pickings here.” This was obviously untrue — judging by the man’s accent, he couldn’t have been born and raised anywhere other than this very region — but the bandit was just as obviously not stupid enough to admit where he and his companion were actually from.
The wagon driver didn’t care, though. She was just trying to keep the men talking and distracted long enough for her companion to reach slowly behind her without being noticed. Then things would get ugly.
“We’re headed for Eloma,” she continued. “City goods fetch a good price out here.”
“Oh, don’t I know it,” grinned the bandit. “But you’re not taking nothing to Eloma.”
“This is stuff they need,” the merchant protested.
“Sure it is,” the man agreed. “Only now they’ll pay us for it, not you.”
The other woman’s hand was slowly closing around the hilt of a long knife that lay half-concealed behind her in the high-piled cargo. Which meant it was time to intervene; no matter how skilled she was with the weapon, the odds were badly against her, especially with that nocked arrow pointed so surely at the other’s chest.
Seijuurou, who didn’t fancy seeing the women get shot or robbed blind, stood straight from where he’d been leaning against a tree to watch. But before he’d taken a single step, a new voice joined the conversation beyond.
“Some reason you’re blocking the road here?”
It was a loud, annoyed, suspicious tone, and a familiar one. Seijuurou’s view of the newcomer was obstructed by a tree, but he recognized the voice and the accompanying energy; it was Eloma’s resident heretic, the boy with the ragged hair and angry expression. At the inn where Seijuurou had been restocking his liquor, he’d overheard that voice conversing with the innkeeper’s, accepting an errand to Egato, which explained the young man’s presence on the forest road. He must have left shortly after Seijuurou, and had now arrived, shortly after Seijuurou, at the miniature, confrontational roadblock just in time to provide the distraction the merchants needed.
Both of the bandits looked around, startled, for a mere fraction of a moment, and that fraction was all it took for the woman to draw and throw her knife.
The bowman cried out, weapon falling from his now-bleeding hand and the suddenly-loosed arrow flying harmlessly high into a tree. The other woman shook the reins and called out shrilly to her horse, which leaped forward; the bandits’ startled mounts protested and fell back as the wagon thundered by. Seijuurou, who had advanced nearly to the road’s edge, observed the young man from Eloma spring aside to avoid being trampled, then return quickly to the center of the lane to confront the furious thieves.
He was now holding a sword, and Seijuurou noted with some surprise that it was a keonblade. Given the inexpert grip on the hilt and the shortness of the energy blade, Seijuurou might well have thought him yet another bandit, this one with a stolen weapon he didn’t know how to use, if he hadn’t already been aware (in general) who the young man was. He doubted the real bandits knew much about keonmastery, however, and wasn’t surprised that they were now eyeing the rough-looking, irritated heretic in blood-red with easily as much caution as anger. It took guts, after all, to stand up to two armed, mounted men, and it took guts to walk around in public dressed like that.
“I fucking hate bandits,” the young man announced.
“And I fucking hate little shits who think they’re big enough to get in my way,” the swordsman replied, kicking his mount into motion. The bravado in his tone, matching that of the heretic, really didn’t do much for him; it wasn’t difficult to be brave facing a man on foot when you were on a horse.
The boy, to his greater credit, stood his ground, scowling, as the animal and its murderous rider bore down on him. At the last second the horse, no more anxious for a collision than the heretic probably was, despite its superior size, swerved aside. The swordsman swept the weapon in his hand at his target, but the latter dodged and struck out at the bandit’s leg with the pommel of his own sword. Seijuurou couldn’t quite see everything clearly through the mess of branches that still concealed his presence, but the blow must have connected, for the bandit roared and was overly slow in halting and wheeling his horse.
Meanwhile, the young man had turned toward his second enemy, who had been groaning over an injured hand and attempting clumsily to wrap it up with something. The bow still lay on the earth where it had fallen, and the bandit looked on warily as the heretic bent and picked it up; his expression changed to one of slight dismay as he watched the boy toss the object into the air without a word and swing his sword at it with shocking force. The bow did not break all the way through, but there was a loud cracking sound as the blade made contact, and a second similar noise as the ruined weapon hit the ground hard. The young man kicked it away, toward the edge of the road and the trees, then turned to face the swordsman again. The latter was now even angrier than before and ready for another charge.
Now it was really time to intervene. Though the bandit’s anger would likely make him even more careless, the fact that he was mounted still put the Eloma boy at a disadvantage — and the other man might not sit there nursing his hand forever. Seijuurou stepped from the trees and drew his own sword, allowing it to flash slightly as the blade extended. “This has gone far enough,” he declared. “It’s time for both of you to go back to wherever you came from and rethink your way of life; if you continue to prey on travelers in this area, you will not live long.”
All three of the others present stared at him in surprise; as the bandits looked him over, this, in their case, changed to trepidation. Seijuurou met the gaze of the swordsman without emotion, and it wasn’t long before the bandit broke eye contact and looked away, then urged his animal uncomfortably past Seijuurou and the heretic to join his companion.
Horse or no horse, it was a little more difficult to be brave facing Seijuurou than it had been to face the younger man.
After a muttered conference, the bandits took off up the road at a brisk trot. The first man, who’d sheathed his sword, did look back once as if he wanted to make a defiant parting remark, but seemed to think better of it. Seijuurou watched until they were out of sight, then put his own weapon away and went to retrieve the knife that the merchant had thrown and been forced to abandon. When he returned to where the heretic was standing and looking a little baffled, he said, “It was a good thought, but a trifle suicidal.” And he held out the knife.
“What do I want that for?” the boy asked.
“You’ll be in Eloma again sooner than I will,” explained Seijuurou. “If they’re still there, you can return it. If not, keep it; they owe you that much at least.”
Slowly the young man reached out and took the knife, then turned to stare up the road in the direction the riders had gone. “I would have pounded both their asses into the dirt if you hadn’t scared ’em off,” he grumbled discontentedly.
With a raised brow Seijuurou said, “Not with that weapon, you wouldn’t have.”
“What? Why the hell not?” The heretic glanced down at his keonblade, his scowl not diminishing, then sheathed it.
“Come on,” the bigger man gestured. “It’s going to rain soon.” There was no mistaking the heavy, wet scent and feel of the air, and Seijuurou wanted to get home. He hadn’t planned on having his walk back from town interrupted by stupid criminal activities. When the boy caught up with him a few paces later he went on, “I’d recommend taking some lessons before you run into someone who actually knows how to use a keonblade.”
“Someone like you?”
Seijuurou nodded. “Fortunately, I’m not inclined to kill you at the moment.”
“Well, who says I wasn’t just holding back on purpose? Those guys woulda been too easy to beat with a full blade.”
“I say,” replied Seijuurou with a roll of his eyes. “Where and why did you get a keonblade if you don’t know how to use one?”
“Someone who came through here a couple of months back had one for sale. I figured it couldn’t be too hard to figure out. Since when are you an expert on this, anyway? Aren’t you that potter who lives all alone up past the crossroads?”
“Yes. My name is Seijuurou. And I’ve been a keonmaster since before you were born.”
“How fucking young do you think I am?” the boy retorted skeptically, perhaps not realizing that he was inadvertently complimenting Seijuurou with his incredulity. “And if you’re so great, why are you living all alone in the middle of the forest?”
“How young do you think I am?” wondered Seijuurou mildly, entirely ignoring the young man’s second question. “And what’s your name?”
“Sano,” replied the other.
“You’re a heretic, I understand.”
“Yeah… that a problem?”
“Only for you.”
Sano rolled his eyes.
“I was impressed by your little performance today,” Seijuurou informed him, “and that doesn’t happen often. If you’re interested in learning how to use that second-hand weapon of yours, we could probably make arrangements.”
Now Sano’s eyes widened. “What, just like that? You’ve been coming into town every couple of weeks to buy shit for as long as I’ve lived there and never once talked to me, but all of a sudden when you see me swinging some crappy keon sword around you’re willing to train me even though I’m a heretic?”
“That about summarizes it,” Seijuurou nodded. “Of course it won’t be free, but I’m sure we can agree on reasonable terms.”
Sano opened his mouth, looking concerned, but Seijuurou interrupted him, gesturing at the road ahead as he spoke. “Here’s where we part. I don’t feel like standing around talking to you in the rain, and you need to get moving if you’re going to be back from Egato before Mis’hyou. If you’re interested, come to my house when you do get back; you can’t miss it if you keep on up this road.”
They’d reached the juncture where the way to Egato met the road up the mountain from Eloma. With a slight nod at the somewhat bemused Sano, Seijuurou didn’t break his stride as he left the young man standing uncertainly at the crossroad and continued on toward home.
“I’ll… see you then, then…” Sano called from behind him.
He’d left Seijuurou’s house a little earlier than usual this time, under the rather flimsy excuse that it looked like rain and he wanted to get home before that, when the real motivator was simply his annoyance. Seijuurou had undoubtedly seen right through this, but had graciously allowed Sano his illusion; they’d had their usual bath in the river, and Sano had taken his surly leave.
So now, in a moment uncannily similar to one he’d experienced in this exact spot a week ago, Sano found himself at the crossroads on the way home, wet hair dripping down the back of his neck, irritated and ready to be distracted, hearing swift footsteps on the connecting road. This time, however, Sano wasn’t close enough yet that the unknown runner was likely to collide with him, and the tread sounded heavier and more erratic than Yahiko’s had.
Again he stopped to see what would come around the corner, watching through the trees that blocked his view of the Torosa Forest Road, waiting. And this time, rather than a frightened-looking little boy, it was a full-grown man that half-ran-half-stumbled abruptly into view. Before his stagger failed entirely and he fell to his knees, one arm clenched tightly across his bloody side and chest, the device of the Baranor’mei royal family was clearly visible on his shiiya, which had previously been pure white. Breathing harshly, he seemed to struggle for a moment to rise again.
Startled, Sano moved toward him, calling out, “Hey, there — you all right?”
The man looked up, fixing Sano with an unexpectedly piercing yellow gaze. “Do I look ‘all right?'” he growled, and collapsed.
Sano finished closing the distance between them at a run, falling to his knees at the stranger’s side with a fast-beating heart. He reached out to haul the man up and turn him over, confirming he’d gone unconscious. “What in Misao’s name happened to you?” he wondered rhetorically. “Is someone…”
He glanced up from the motionless face, looking at the Torosa Forest Road. Nothing moved as far as he could see, but he couldn’t see very far. The normal noises of bird, beast, and weather seemed suddenly menacing. “Is someone after you?” he finished at a whisper. That did seem to be the trend… But this was no barefoot kid running from peevish devoted. This man, wearing the uniform of a royal knight and a sheath that looked like it belonged to a keonblade, had been badly wounded and exhausted; whoever was chasing him, whoever had bloodied him up, seemed unlikely to be seeking minor punishment for small-scale theft.
Sano half stood and slung his backpack around to his chest, pulling the straps onto his back. Then, awkwardly and with no inconsiderable difficulty, he hauled the unconscious man up. How far he could walk like this he didn’t know; the backpack was already slipping, and the man was very inconvenient to carry… but he’d be happy just to get far enough away to feel a little more secure.
“Random heretic thief kids running off and random knights passing out in front of my face in the fucking forest…” he grumbled as he trudged off the road straight into the thickest foliage. “Don’t know what’s with that crossroads…”
He moved obliquely away from the crossroads in question, stumbling through the undergrowth and over rocks, breathing hard as he forced his way up hills and down into dells around the trees and through the bushes. He’d never given much thought to just how thick and healthy Torosa Forest was, but never before had he tried to carry through it someone a little larger than himself.
Finally he stopped. Whether he’d come far enough or not he didn’t know, but he didn’t really feel like walking a single step more. Unceremoniously he dumped the stranger onto the ground and propped him against a tree, flung his backpack down nearby, and took a seat against another trunk.
“Well,” he remarked breathlessly, staring at his unconscious companion, “maybe the king’ll give me a reward for saving you from whatever.” Looking back over his shoulder the way he’d come, he added darkly, “I just hope ‘whatever’ isn’t too good at tracking shit through a forest.”
As he caught his breath and let his muscles cool, he studied the stranger. The man’s face seemed very harsh, though that could simply be an expression of pain. Sano had already seen his eyes open, if only briefly, and had occasion to know just how tall and well shaped he was. And he was definitely a royal knight, and definitely wounded. Beyond a number of little cuts covering both of his arms as if he’d been shielding his face from a hail of sharp, tiny objects, there was a gash along the man’s side at the bottom of his ribcage, as if he’d only just failed to dodge a low sword-thrust. Sano would have to do something about it if he intended to help the guy.
The typical shape of a keonblade, that of a short sword or long knife, was useful in situations like this where a full-sized sword would have been awkward. Admittedly Sano didn’t keep the metal blade very sharp, since it functioned merely as a channel for a much sharper energy blade, but it was enough to cut the man’s shiiya and shirt off of him. Once he’d peeled these gently away from the gash, the latter began bleeding more freely, and Sano tried to hurry.
As a close acquaintance of Seijuurou, Sano never lacked a bottle when he needed one. At the moment, in fact, he had four on him, all of them nicely worked ceramic from the hands of the master himself — three to be refilled with angiruou in town and returned to Seijuurou next weekend, but the fourth fortuitously full of water. This Sano used to soak the unbloodied sleeve he’d cut off the man’s shiiya, with which he then set about cleaning the wound as best he could. Once this was done, he cut what remained unstained of the shirt and the shiiya into strips and tied them together, and with these makeshift bandages bound up the cut.
Then he sat back against his own tree again, his eyes fixed on the face of the other man, who had remained limp and unresponsive the entire time Sano had been assisting him. The wound didn’t look lethal, but, for all Sano knew, his efforts had been in vain and the knight would never awaken. He’d certainly seemed worn out in those few moments Sano had observed him conscious.
“What happened to you?” murmured Sano, studying again the long legs, muscular bare chest, and pained unconscious face of the stranger. “Bandits?” was his guess; they weren’t nearly as prevalent as they had been in years past, but they still showed up around here at times. What a royal knight was doing alone so far from the capital Sano couldn’t begin to imagine, but that was less his business than were bandits in the area. He hated little more than bandits, which gave him an automatic sense of sympathy for this man that had apparently been their victim.
He considered the matter. A messy skirmish with some of those assholes would be very satisfying at the moment, but he wasn’t sure how he could manage both to locate and engage these hypothetical villains and assist this unconscious knight. The latter would be a liability in any fight with more than one opponent, but if Sano left him he ran the risk of being unable to find him again, or of finding him dead. Little as he liked it, he reached the conclusion that it would be best to forego the fight, wait here for a while until whoever was after this guy had (hopefully) moved on, and take him to town.
“Well…” he said, leaning back and making himself as comfortable as he could amidst the knobbly tree roots and prickling grass, “try not to die just yet.”
A lane of carved stone pillars ran out into invisibility in the darkness ahead of him; the deep blood-red of the floor beneath his feet reflected dully on their glossy gold surfaces, but the ceiling overhead was indistinguishable in the shadows. Likewise, nothing could be made out beyond the pillars, where even the floor seemed to disappear into blackness. It didn’t matter; the pillars marked a clear path from which he had no desire, at the moment, to deviate.
Perhaps down that path he would find another chain. Lovingly he ran his hand over the one he already had where it lay over his shoulder and chest, crushing somewhat the fine black and red cloth of his royal shiiya. This chain was a smooth warm grey, made of some exceptionally attractive metal, and so well crafted that each link seemed to be a continuous piece with no rough joint or signs of welding. If he could locate another like this, he would have a matched set, and for such a reward he would gladly walk this dark, pillared path.
There was, however, a strange tension in the dry air. It was as if he was aware of being followed, and trying to stay just out of sight of his pursuer — either that or aware he would presently encounter something unpleasant, and bracing himself for it. Strange, that, when he was almost certain he would find another chain somewhere around here soon. But the feeling could not be ignored, and only grew with every step he took forward, until he was walking with great caution, setting his feet in their golden shoes down as quietly as he was capable.
And there was his chain. It dangled above his head from something he could not make out in the shadows, but he knew if he tugged on it once and then let go, he could detach it and take it with him. Pleased, he stopped just beneath it and reached up with a smile. But even as he did so, something over to his left caught his eye — something not the dull gold or dark red of the rest of his surroundings. He turned his head in that direction.
The knight, dressed, like Sano, in red and black of royal design, stood between two pillars. No, ‘stood’ wasn’t the right word. For from out of the open wound in his side, glowing a brighter crimson even than his kingly garb, chains of blood stretched to wrap around the pillars at either side of him and return to snake around him — around his arms and chest and waist and even around his neck, holding him firmly upright. Yellow irises were visible, but he evidently saw nothing, and his entire frame was limp. Yet he could not be dead, for Sano could feel his pain. He could also feel a swiftly growing sense of wrongness to this entire scene. The tension of before was escalating, blossoming into a hot, jittery panic and an almost uncontrollable horror.
He awoke with what felt like a jerk, though he hadn’t actually moved except to open his eyes. His heart raced; he was hot and uncomfortable.
With a deep breath he shook his head slightly, calming himself and looking around. The air smelled strongly of rain, though no moisture seemed yet to have fallen; the forest sounded no different than usual; and the unconscious knight still reclined against the tree opposite, appearing the same as before. Sano stared at him for a long moment, wondering why in the world he should have had a nightmare about this man.
When his heart had slowed to its normal pace and his breathing evened out, he turned away from the knight and laid his face against the rough bark of the tree, looking at nothing. He wasn’t particularly trying to go back to sleep, but wasn’t exactly fighting it either. And eventually his eyes closed once again.
On an ocean without waves, without wind, without currents — without, in fact, any motion whatsoever — the noises of gentle breakers and breezes were sourceless, inexplicable. Sano raised his head, feeling the long, long ends of his bandanna brush the back of his bare neck, and took in the salty scent of the warm, still air. It was very light and open; the sky seemed to extend upward forever in a smooth, perfect paleness several shades lighter than the blue of the ocean.
The stepping-stones also seemed to go on forever. They spiraled out from a big one in the center, featureless like the rest, in larger and larger circles into distant invisibility far off where sea met sky. Walking them was a lengthy, repeating, ever-widening pattern, and Sano wished he could simply jump from one ring to the next; it would be so much faster. Unfortunately, the rings were just a touch too far apart for him to have a chance of making such a leap.
Looking into the tranquil water, he followed the sides of the stepping-stones with his eyes, down into the dark depths, until he could no longer make out their shapes in the intense blue-black beneath him. There would be no swimming in this ocean. So he simply took the path laid out for him.
But suddenly he was uneasy. Each long step he took onto another smooth grey rock increased his discomfort; something was wrong. And the feeling of wrongness grew quickly into a more troubling sensation, something more like fear. But there was nothing here to fear; as a matter of fact, there was almost nothing here.
Or was there? Now Sano looked around more pointedly than his absent, horizon-sweeping gaze of before, he realized he was not alone. For on the spiral’s next ring out, on the stone corresponding with Sano’s in this ring, stood the knight.
Although his otherwise pure white shiiya held no visible rent, his side was still bloody and evidently very painful. He seemed, however, to have this, as well as his exhaustion, under better control now; fully conscious, standing under his own power, he stared at Sano intensely. His long, sleek hair was unbound and fell down his back; the red-orange kouseto, symbol of the king he served, was bright and unstained; and his presence there on that rock on this ocean seemed in every way, somehow, impossibly, dreadfully wrong.
The man reached out a hand in a gesture seemingly designed to catch Sano’s attention and stop him moving, and spoke. The words were garbled past understanding, but the intent was a little clearer: the man wanted Sano to listen to him… wanted something from him…
Just this much communication from the figure that seemed so horrifyingly out of place here was enough to startle Sano into an ill-advised step backward. He couldn’t be sure he hadn’t already hit the water before he even fell, since he seemed to be soaking wet, but, in any case, he stumbled back off the stone–
–and awoke again abruptly. It was raining, and, even allowing for cloud cover and forest shadows, seemed darker around him than before. He sat up straight, for a second time taking a deep breath and trying to calm a pounding heart.
Once again he looked over at his unconscious companion. Two inexplicable nightmares in a row about the guy, and he wasn’t even scary! Rolling his shoulders to ease the stiffness caused by napping up against a tree, Sano moved over to the other man and looked closely at him. “It’s this face of yours…” he muttered, reaching up to brush a few drops of rain off a high cheekbone, trace the side of a narrow nose, and lay his fingertips on a precisely well-formed pair of thin lips. It was a demanding face; no wonder Sano had gotten the impression of something being required of him in that second dream.
The knight gave no response whatsoever to Sano’s light touch, and was breathing rather shallowly. Sano looked around at the darkening forest, reflecting that it had probably been long enough; whoever the knight’s enemies were, he doubted they were anywhere near the crossroads now. He hadn’t really meant to sleep at all, but it certainly had been an effective way to kill time.
He buttoned up his sleeves against the rain, and pulled out his leather hood and put it on. Then, having no desire to walk anywhere ever again with his back encumbered by a man and his chest by a backpack, he set the latter in the crook of two tree roots and scraped up a bunch of forest mulch against it so it blended in with the undergrowth. Of course he couldn’t be certain he would be able to find it later, but it had just been such a pain before… Well, if he never saw it again, perhaps the knight could be convinced to pay him for a new one, if he survived.
The forest and the road on his way back were quiet, as was Eloma when he reached it; even those townspeople that might have been out in the evening darkness had sought their houses in this rain. Still he decided to go the long way around to his own place so as not to be visible from any of the inn’s windows. For it had occurred to him that the knight’s enemies might have come to the village seeking him, perhaps posing as regular travelers in order to get beds for the night. If Sano could secure the injured man in his house without anyone seeing, he could head over to the inn and find out if any strangers were present or had passed through.
The rain was coming down harder than ever as he finally reached his door and struggled mightily to get at his key without dropping his burden. Inside, he let the man slide off his back onto his bed, then stood, panting, looking down at him critically for several moments even before arranging the knight’s limbs into a more comfortable position than they’d initially taken on falling.
“You know, I’m not even sure why I’m helping you,” he told the unresponsive man as he removed his hood and tossed it onto the floor. “Like I care about the king or his fucking knights.” He pulled off his shiiya, which was soaked, and sent it to follow the hood. “Course, whoever’s after you might be a good fight…” He shook his head and moved to light his candle so he could see what he was doing.
Though not as bad as Sano’s shiiya, the knight’s remaining garments were still rather wet. Sano, however, drew the line at removing the pants of a total stranger if he didn’t have to. Instead, he pulled both of his blankets from under the recumbent form and tucked one around the man. The other he bunched up and threw onto the stool that sat beside his table. Then he stood back and considered whether or not he should build a fire. Eventually he decided not to; rain notwithstanding, it was a warm enough night, and he didn’t want to attract more attention to his home than necessary until he knew exactly what was going on.
Looking back down at the knight’s face, he felt drawn once again to run his finger over one of those high cheekbones. He remembered that feeling in his dream, of the man needing something from him. This was all very odd — odder, he thought, than it really ought to be.
He turned. He looked down at his wet things on the floor. He listened to the pounding rain above his head. He definitely wasn’t going back outside in this downpour. He would wait until it let up a bit.
He should have known better. Seated on his stool and leaning, more or less comfortably, in the corner formed by his cabinet and the wall, with the blanket tucked up around his chest, watching the unconscious knight and listening to the rhythmic rain, it wasn’t long before his eyelids and head both drooped and he fell asleep again.
Sano’s legs burned, especially the knees as he forced them to bend and straighten again and again and again. The stairs just went on and on, winding around the tower into eternity, it seemed. He had no way of telling how high it might be, since when he looked up he only saw the next level of stairs. In fact, if the steps hadn’t gradually changed color from red to orange to yellow, he might have believed he was repeatedly climbing the same ones. But he couldn’t stop.
Out to his right lay only blackness; the tower, perhaps, stretched so high as to have abandoned all light, even the stars. To his left was a curving, neverending wall, punctuated by the occasional window paned with impossibly large sheets of glass that showed a narrower, darker staircase inside the tower to mirror the one without. And as he passed these windows, Sano kept getting the feeling that something was in there, climbing along with him on the other side of the wall… but at first he only caught the movements out of the corner of his eye, and whenever he looked directly through the glass he saw nothing.
Then, like a hot wind blowing up out of nowhere and warming the area only slowly, not even overtly perceptible at first, the familiar feeling that something was wrong crept over him. Uncomfortable, he forced his unhappy legs to move even faster, hoping to reach some kind of conclusion to this journey. True, the wrongness somehow didn’t seem as wrong as it had in the past, but he would very much like it to stop. He must climb these stairs; he didn’t need things out of place distracting and worrying him.
Suddenly a thudding knock echoed through the interior of the tower to his left. Looking in that direction, Sano found the source of the wrongness on the other side of the nearest window: the exasperated knight stood in the darkness and pounded on the glass. Even as Sano met his eyes, he called out. The meaning came across as something simultaneously demanding and insulting, but the words themselves were muffled and only half audible. It didn’t matter, though, since nothing could be accomplished thereby… just the appearance of the man had startled Sano so he’d jerked back, lost his footing at the edge of the stairs, and plunged out into the black abyss.
The stool, which he’d been unconsciously tipping on two of its legs while he slept, clattered out from under him as he flailed, sending him thumping heavily to the floor with a startled cry. For a moment, disoriented, he sat still feeling his tailbone smarting and his heart pounding before he let out an irritated sigh of recognition and scrambled slowly up.
Again he hadn’t intended to fall asleep, and thus had left the candle alight. Some time must have passed, as it was burning considerably lower now than before, excess grease setting out across the table in a valiant attempt at reaching the other side. Perhaps he would make the knight pay for a new candle as well.
Sano turned toward the man. He still lay in the bed in the same position as before, unmoving, breathing quiet and face inscrutable. Sluggishly Sano went to stand beside him, staring down with a scowl and rubbing his sore ass. “How is it you can startle me awake for no reason I can see,” he grumbled, “but nothing wakes you up?”
The man in the bed did not reply.
Sano’s eyes fell next upon his shiiya and hood, still heaped on the floor beside the table, and he remembered his plan to go to the inn and see if there were any bandits around. Wearily he shook his head. No way. He turned back to his little corner, blew out the candle, righted the stool, took up the blanket, and sat down again. Arranging the blanket over himself once more, he leaned back, put his head against the wall, and closed his eyes.
It wasn’t just grime, or something someone had spilled; it was paint, long since dried and hardened, that needed to be cleaned from the floor in its entirety. And since the floor was made of colorless glass, even the tiniest speck of remaining paint would be readily visible: there was no way to half-ass this job. His hands were already sore — both of them, since he’d been alternating which one held the hefty scrub-brush — and wrinkled and clammy from repeated dipping in his water bucket.
He looked out in front of him in dismay. Whoever had done this painting, he’d been damnably enthusiastic… the bright, blinding orange stretched out across the floor as far as the eye could see. “Yumi, there’s so fucking much of it…”
It was terribly appropriate for him to be clad entirely in red; red devoted were constantly relegated to this kind of drudgery. Normally nobody would mistake him for a man of the church with this empty teardrop on his chest, but when he was bent over in working his fingers to the bone, his chest wouldn’t be visible. The possibility someone might think him a devoted as he went about this onerous task added insult to injury, really.
But there was nothing for it. Grumbling, he kept on, scrubbing hard and watching the paint lighten to a paler orange and then gold before it gave way and dissolved into nothing. And there was something satisfying about seeing the clear patch he worked on grow larger and larger, but he knew if he looked up he would only be discouraged by how little relative progress he’d made so far.
With one particular scrub, something became visible down in the glass underneath. It was flesh-colored, and with the sight of it came that good old feeling of wrongness again. This latter wasn’t nearly as pronounced as before, however. Sano had sat back, stilling his hands and staring, the moment the object came into view, feeling the usual panic start fluttering up inside him, but now he leaned forward again slowly and concentrated on getting the paint off that spot. He was fairly sure he knew what the thing underneath must be, and he was fairly sure it shouldn’t be here, but he couldn’t be certain until he’d uncovered it completely.
And perhaps the slow buildup to certainty was what allowed him to assimilate and overcome the horror that came with the sense of wrongness. No, those fingertips, that hand, that arm — they were not supposed to be there. But that didn’t mean he needed to panic, did it? By the time he’d gotten all the paint off the glass above the shoulder and was starting on the chest, he was breathing normally, and didn’t think he would be startled away any time soon.
The chest, as he’d rather been expecting, bore the device of the king’s knights: the Baranor’mei family symbol on a grey diamond shape. After he’d uncovered this, he moved on to the neck and head. He found the eyes open and seemingly able to see him, but it was clear the knight couldn’t move; he was entirely trapped within the glass floor.
He could speak, however. “B..y, ..an ….u h….r me?” he demanded.
Sano was still nervous, though not for any concrete reason he could perceive, and sat back up, farther away from the face beneath the glass, as he heard these words. And in that moment he realized he was dreaming. He was also struck with another thought simultaneously: “You’re really talking to me, aren’t you? I’m not imagining this.”
The dream was already fading; they usually did when you realized you were having them. The knight seemed to recognize this, for he spoke quickly. “D..e..ms ..re ..ot st..bl.. eno..gh fo.. th..s… ca.. y..u m..d..tat..?”
“Uh…” Of all the things in the world he could have asked Sano to do…
“…us..le..s…” complained the knight, even as everything disappeared.
Sano awoke angry. Who did that guy think he was, calling Sano useless? “Shoulda known you’d be more trouble than you’re worth,” he growled, getting to his feet in the darkness. Arms crossed in annoyance, he glared in the direction he knew the bed and the knight lay, though he couldn’t see them. Who did that guy think had gotten him away from the crossroads out in the forest, patched him up, kept an eye out for the bandits or whoever they were, and dragged his ass all the way to safety?
Sano’s anger faded somewhat, however, in the face of the sheer strangeness of this situation. So the knight maintained dreams were not stable enough for this kind of communication. Sano had never heard of people communicating via dream at all, so it made sense they wouldn’t be very stable. And the knight wanted him to meditate so they could talk properly, but…
“Fuck that,” he grumbled, then sighed as he began fumbling for his fire-starter in the darkness to relight what remained of the candle. There really was only one thing to be done, under the circumstances. “You owe me for this, bastard.”
An hour and a half later, Sano staggered into the clearing around Seijuurou’s small house. The knight had seemed to become heavier with every step up the mountain road, and what was normally a forty-five minute walk had taken twice as long. The sun had already risen by the time he reached the place, and Sano would have been ready to curse at the top of his lungs at his master or anyone else he encountered if he hadn’t been breathing so heavily.
Seijuurou was out early today, evidently watching the sun rise from the seat among the shelves under his roof. The act of raising a bottle of angiruou to his lips was interrupted when he saw Sano come trudging around the last of the trees toward him, and a skeptical expression crossed his face.
“Every time I think you can’t do anything to inconvenience me further,” he remarked in a carrying tone, standing and taking a step forward to lean on the roof support and direct his skepticism out at Sano, “you come up with something new… like dragging a dead body onto my property and giving me that look like you expect me to do something about it.”
“Shut up!” Sano growled, drawing tediously closer. “You have any idea how lady-damned hard it was to drag his ass all the way up here?”
Seijuurou enjoyed the drink he’d put off before, then said, “I wonder why you took the trouble. I don’t know what you were expecting.”
Sano struggled both not to explode and not to dump the knight onto the ground right here. “I need your help with him.”
“A threesome’s not a bad idea,” Seijuurou replied in a mild tone of agreement, “but find someone alive for the third part.”
“He’s not dead yet, asshole. Just tell me where I can put him.” Sano’s back ached from walking all this way bent so far over, and his arms were falling asleep from clutching at the knight in the same position for so long.
Seijuurou shrugged. “Anywhere,” he said carelessly.
“Fine,” Sano snapped, and pushed his way into the house. They’d see if Seijuurou was so indifferent when the knight was occupying his bed.
Once he’d unloaded, Sano started stretching out his back and tingling arms with a groan, while Seijuurou sauntered in to join him looking down at the unconscious man. After another drink of his angiruou the keonmaster finally said in a leading tone, “So…”
Sano stopped flexing his hands and stood still. “I ran into him on the way home yesterday,” he explained. “I got the feeling someone was after him, so I got him cleaned up in the forest and took a nap ’til dark so they’d get off his track. His wound doesn’t seem too bad, but even after I got it bandaged he didn’t wake up.”
While Sano said this, Seijuurou corked his bottle and set it down on the floor, then bent over the knight. In quick succession he checked the man’s pulse, pulled up an eyelid to see the white beneath, lifted the bandages slightly to examine the injury, and finally lay a hand on the man’s chest as if to feel its rise and fall. When he was finished with this and Sano had gone silent, he looked up and said, “It’s a warrior’s coma.
“Sometimes,” he went on, standing straight and turning back to Sano, “when a strong keonmaster lets his purpose drive him past what his body can handle, to the point where he would normally pass out, he unconsciously channels his spiritual energy to keep him on his feet. Typically someone strong enough to do this also has the level of control required to shut off that channel before it becomes–”
“All right, all right, all right,” Sano interrupted. He could usually listen to most of Seijuurou’s lectures all the way through, but at the moment, still tired and sore from his walk and eager to figure out this mysterious knight’s history, his tolerance for his master’s pompous explanatory style was very small. “I thought I was telling the story here.”
“Well, don’t blame me when this little project of yours falls apart because you have no idea what’s going on.”
“Anyway,” continued Sano loudly, “I kept seeing him in my dreams — more than I would expect, I mean — and I started to think… well, that it was really him and not just me imagining shit.”
“Interesting.” And, judging by his manner of crossing his arms and turning his eyes down toward the knight again, Seijuurou actually was interested. “What did he say?”
“He told me dreams are unstable and asked if I could meditate.”
Seijuurou smirked. “And since you are unforgivably hopeless at that, you brought him to me. What makes you think I’m at all interested in talking to him?”
“Well, he’s one of the king’s knights… who was doing something he thought was damn important, if he was pushing himself that hard…”
Having expected Seijuurou to be disinterested in helping the random stranger Sano had dragged onto his property, Sano had prepared this argument beforehand. What he hadn’t expected was for this argument to catch his master’s attention so completely. For when Seijuurou repeated, “One of the king’s knights?” there was an absolutely unprecedented note of engrossment in his voice, and a sudden look in his eye Sano had never seen there.
“His shiiya had that royal kouseto on it,” Sano confirmed.
Seijuurou made a thoughtful sound, gazing down at the knight more intently than before and fingering his chin. He continued thus for several long moments, face unreadable, reflections unguessable.
Finally, impatiently, Sano demanded, “So you gonna talk to him, or what?”
“I suppose I’d better,” Seijuurou replied in a slow tone that was half annoyance and half that same intense contemplation. And as he shifted into a meditative stance, one hand curled around the other fist at chest-level, he murmured as if to himself, “Foolish boy’s probably gotten himself in trouble again…”
Sano started. “Wha- him? You know this guy?”
Seijuurou glanced over at Sano as if he’d forgotten he was there. “No,” he said almost absently, “I’m referring to someone else.” And he turned his head back and closed his eyes.
“Wait,” demanded Sano, “how am I supposed to hear what he tells you?”
Again Seijuurou made the thoughtful noise, then said, “Let’s try this.” And, without even opening his eyes to check his aim, he reached out with a sure hand and struck Sano so hard on the back of the skull that darkness instantly overwhelmed him.
Divine lady Tomoe. The black lotus represents death, which Tomoe (among other things) does as well. Here’s the full-color version too:
Why is she in a yoga pose? I’m not entirely sure. Just what I thought looked cool back when I drew the picture, I guess XD
Divine lady Misao. Her symbol is a rabbit because she is, among other things, particularly fond of small, quick animals. Here’s the full-color version as well:
