Shadow Magic (35 page)

My lord was not speaking to me. I would have liked to think that there were many reasons for that. We were both thinking about the best way to bypass the border crossing, for example, and did not wish to disturb one another. I had a feeling, however, that I knew the truth of the matter, which was that he had yet to forgive me for my fit of temper in the village. And there was no reason why he should have.

Even knowing as I did the insult paid to my lord by Jiang—filthy bastard
dog
—I could hardly excuse my actions. Better to have held my tongue, along with my hands, and have got us safely through the checkpoint.

Mamoru had done so well in adapting to his new station, despite his noble upbringing and the absence of all the things he’d once held dear. I could not afford to do less, to shame him by being unable to turn aside my duty as it was to protect him. The only difficulty was that I did not know what manner of man I was without my duty to Mamoru, first and foremost. Not when I had gone against the Emperor himself to fulfill it.

“Are you thirsty?” I asked. It was a cursory question, one that had as much to do with keeping my lord well as it did with ascertaining his temperament.

“No,” my lord answered, managing to convey how angry he was with me by that one word, itself like a blow.

“Ah,” I nodded, judging our progress by the distance from the wall. We would cross the border well before nightfall. There was that, at least, to be thankful for.

We rode on, the silence weighing heavily on my heart for all the times before when we had made games of guessing what birds there were in the trees above us, or what animal rustled in the bushes by the roadside. My lord had always been so cheerful in times past, and I had taken it away from him. I feared that if I allowed him to dwell too long on the things that made him unhappy, the well of his misery would rise up and swallow him whole. There was so much that he had lost, after all, and it was only his immutable spirit that kept him strong.

“We should stop here,” I said at last. “Even if you are not thirsty, the horse will need to be watered.”

My lord said nothing, only allowed his slender shoulders to rise and fall with grudging consent.

I dismounted behind him, leading the horse to the stream that was hidden just off the road. The clouds over our heads were a gathering dark, and I hoped that it would not mean rain before nightfall. When it came to helping my lord down, he took my hands—stiff as they were, the knuckles cracked from each unrefined blow—but refused to look at me.

In some ways, it was that which gave me the courage to speak again.

“Mamoru,” I said.

“Don’t,” he said, less angry this time, and with a greater pleading.

There was another rustling in the bushes, which for a moment gave us pause. More than likely it was an animal, though, and one disappointed by the occupation of its favorite water hole. My lord stroked the horse’s mane, as though in need of something to do with his hands. His shoulders were set against me. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him. I waited the barest of minutes before pressing on, heedless of investigating the noise any further.

“I must apologize,” I said, speaking of need and not of duty, for apologizing was akin to drawing the poison from a wound, and even if it was to no avail, it must still be done.

“It does little good now,” Mamoru whispered, as though by quieting his voice he might quiet his anger too. His fingers were knotted in
the horse’s mane. I could tell so easily how he wished for some barrier between us. He held himself rigidly still.

“I… cannot tell you how sorry I am,” I added, for indeed, there were no words that would properly convey my regret in having disappointed him so deeply.

“Then why did you
do
it?” The words burst from him all at once. “You
knew
how important it was that we cross with another party. I don’t need to be defended! I didn’t tell—I didn’t
ask
you to do it.”

“He insulted you,” I murmured, lowering my head.

“You didn’t have to strike him!” Mamoru whirled around. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with hurt and anger. “We aren’t…
there
anymore, Kouje. You don’t have to shelter me so from everything. I would have borne his insult gladly if that was to be the price of crossing the border. We must both make sacrifices.”

“You don’t
know
what he expected as the price for crossing the border,” I said, the words coming so unexpectedly that I didn’t have the time to stop them. “For their
generosity
at the noodle house!”

Mamoru sucked his breath in sharply, perhaps in surprise at my sudden outburst, but the words were rushing from my mouth now, as if they’d found a hole in the dam that had always kept them back. I lifted my head to look him in the eyes.

“He said that he didn’t know about Kichi, but that
he
at least expected a chance between your legs before we parted ways. That it was the proper thing to do—and neighborly. That you couldn’t expect to get anything for free these days.”

I could feel the bile rising in my throat, sharp and hot all over again just remembering Jiang’s words. Even if the man hadn’t known who he was speaking to, it didn’t matter. My obligation to Mamoru ran deeper than the fealty I’d sworn. That had to be true, or else how could I have ignored the Emperor’s command in the first place? The sooner I dealt with the troublesome rebellion within me the better. It was causing problems left and right. I couldn’t tame it. It made me too sharp with him, too cross with myself.

“All the same,” Mamoru insisted, though he looked troubled now, and his voice betrayed the fact that he was growing increasingly distressed. He had balled his hands into fists, and his voice cracked in places, like the spider-line fissures in the fine lacquer of an ornamental
table. “I
didn’t
know that, but as you are
not
my brother in truth, it is not your duty to protect my honor!”

“It is not for duty that I do it!” I said, raising my voice to be heard over his. I took a breath to rein my temper in. I could not afford to lose it again, so hot upon the heels of the first time. “Mamoru,” I added, more softly. The name still sounded strange to my hearing, such a fine name on such an uncultured tongue, but I had to do my best to please my lord at his command when I could, as it seemed there were many areas where I could not.

I did not know what was worse. That it might become easier to say it, or that it might not.

My lord ducked his head down. When he lifted it, his eyes were bright with tears. They were not the beautiful, elegant tears that I’d seen the women of the court weeping, for the loss of their sons and husbands during the war, or even the restrained weeping done behind fans and closed doors for the death of the Emperor. These were messy tears, streaking down his cheeks and reddening his nose. His breath came in short, painful gulps, as though he was no longer able to control himself. I was reminded sharply of the boy he had been, back when the rules laid on our heads had not been so unyielding. I had allowed myself to comfort him, once, when it had been clear that mere words would not do the trick.

Did I remember the way of it now?

“Why?” my lord asked, the word nearly lost in his next wet intake of breath. “I don’t understand it.
Why?”

“Mamoru,” I said again, counseling my voice to hold firm and steady. If I was to calm my lord, I would have to be the steady one. This I knew, above all else.

I reached out one hand to take him by the arm, to draw him close enough to put my arms around him. They knew the way, and it was not so difficult a thing to remember as I’d feared. I could feel the rough, homespun garments stretched thin against his back. He was trembling with the force of his weeping. I could feel it choked and wet against my neck.

“Perhaps what I hold for you is not duty, but something closer to friendship,” I told him in hushed tones, willing him to understand what I myself did not. “Is that not how we are meant to conduct ourselves now that we’ve left the palace?”

It was not entirely the truth, since my disobedience had begun in earnest before we’d ever left the palace. How was I to explain that there were some things that were more important than duty to me, when all I’d known my entire life was simply that? It was everything that I’d been trained for, so that in the end I was shaped as keenly as a sword built for its wielder. Like a sword, I had no other purpose in life save what my wielder gave me. To act alone was unthinkable, and yet I had done it.

“You should have controlled yourself better,” Mamoru told me, his voice slippery and filled with rebuke.

Before I could apologize, or try to put into rational speech the dilemma turning as a tempest within my head, his arms came up around my neck. It told me better than any words that he’d forgiven me.

“I know,” I said, speaking to his former scolding. “I can offer no excuse for my actions. They were inexcusable.”

“Still,” he murmured, snuffling around the word for a moment. “I suppose there is room for a certain amount of irrationality within… friendship.”

“If you are kind enough to allow it,” I acknowledged, feeling myself immeasurably lucky once again for my lord’s particular vein of kindness.

He sighed so deeply that I felt it in my bones. It was a sigh of great relief, from a man who had long been bearing a weight far too heavy for him. Perhaps my lord, too, had been in need of unburdening himself.

“Do you know, Kouje, I feel as though I’ve needed to get that out for ages.”

“We’d best be on the move,” I told him, running my hands sensibly down his back, in a movement meant to induce calm and clear-headedness. “Before the rain starts.”

My lord blinked, and cast his eyes upward to the leafy canopy hiding the clouds that had formed above our heads. To my surprise, he smiled.

“It’s been a dreadfully warm summer,” he said. His face was entirely changed when he was happy. It was all I could do not to swear then and there that happiness was all I would ever seek to bring him. “The land could do with a little rain. I believe it is dry this season. So I have overheard,” he added, and colored at his cheeks and ears.

“In that, you are correct,” I said, ignoring the rest and releasing Mamoru from my hold.

My lord was thinner than he looked, but there was a core of steel beneath all his delicacy that any man would have been proud of. Perhaps it was presumptuous of me to be proud of him, and yet I found that I was anyway, for I had played some part in his upbringing.

“Kouje,” Mamoru said, sounding almost hesitant.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Oh, well it’s nothing really. It’s only… your hair.”

“Ah,” I said, understanding at once the need for such levity. “Well, if you would be so good as to fix it for me, my friend, I would be forever in your debt.”

A smile touched my lord’s eyes at his new title, one more commonly acceptable outside the palace, and yet with a hint of the secret between us.

“You’ll have to sit,” he said, judging the distance between my height and his.

I did.

There was another rustling in the bush, some fox or badger rooting for its evening meal. Our stolen horse snorted impatiently, having finished his own rest and drunk his fill of water. If it was to be raining soon, then we would be better served to leave as quickly as we could. I felt cold dread in my stomach when I thought of what the border crossing might hold for us, but we would come to it sooner or later, and it was my firm belief that sooner was better than later.

That time, when I helped my lord back onto the horse, he smiled at me.

“It shouldn’t be long now until we are at the crossing,” he said. In his voice I could detect none of the worry I myself was feeling.

My lord was, as he’d ever been, determined to look on the future with hope. In that aspect, he was much braver than I, since it seemed far more realistic to plan for a situation that would neither be the best nor the worst possible outcome, but something closer to in between. It was far easier not to fix one’s hope to either. I didn’t understand how my lord could go on being optimistic without the disappointment of his losses eventually dragging him downward. My lord deserved someone who would not worry, as he did.

He needed a friend, and perhaps not a retainer, after all.

“Now then, brother,” Mamoru said, with another relieved sigh. “Mount up.”

We came to the road just as the rain began to fall, fat drops quickly mottling the road dark and light. My lord laughed, and turned his face up toward it, whereas I might otherwise have tried to shield his head from letting a single drop land. At the palace, Mamoru had always carried a parasol, alongside the other fine lords, so as to shield his skin from the sun and the rain alike. On the road, he had already suffered the attentions of the sun, so that his nose and cheeks betrayed a faint pink; the only time I had ever seen him colored so was when he’d been taken over by fever. Just then, it seemed that my lord was about to be rained on, without any recourse or parasols to better our situations.

I’d never have guessed he’d look so delighted at the prospect.

His laughter broke as the sound of wooden wheels creaking toward us caught our attention and startled us each from our more private thoughts. I felt a moment’s reassurance, since that was evidently the sound of rustling I had heard. There was a large wagon approaching, led by a black-and-white horse and followed by a half dozen men and women, their livelihood carried in bundles on their backs. They seemed to me to be a troupe of entertainers, the sort of group of acrobats, dancers, and jugglers that went from town to town to try their fortunes with the crowds in a bigger city. They must have been coming from the border town as we were, since it was the largest hereabouts, and such groups didn’t fare well in small villages, where the men and women had to hold on tightly to what coin they had.

Their caravan bore colorful markings, though as it approached I could see that the red paint was fading in places and one spiraling purple curlicue had all but flaked off. One of their wheels had been recently replaced.