Spirit's Chosen (51 page)

“—wouldn’t make a difference. Not every warrior is a good hunter.” His shoulders slumped. “Lady Himiko … you have no reason to spare my clan after what I did to yours, but … will you help me now? Ask the spirits to show me the right path. My people need the support of other clans. How can we gain that without taking up our swords?”

“It will not be easy,” I admitted. “But I don’t think it will be impossible. The other clans need you too. There is much you can provide for one another and enrich everyone. You must make them see this.”

“I don’t know if I can.” He looked to me for rescue. “But you could, Lady Himiko!”

Before I could reply, I heard the sound of feet thudding up the ladder and stumbling through the doorway to the shrine. Lady Sato began squawking indignantly, Arashi wailed, and above that racket came the sound of Hiroshi’s voice calling, “Lady Himiko! Lady Himiko, are you here? I have news!”

I dashed out of my quarters and found the young guard panting for breath while rainwater ran off his reed cape and puddled on the floor.
How did he manage to reach my village and return here so quickly?
I thought. I tallied the days since his departure in my mind and the result was plain:
Impossible! Why has he come back so soon? What’s wrong?

“Hiroshi, are you all right?” I asked.

He dropped to one knee. “Lady Himiko, pardon me; I could not fulfill my task.”

“What task is he talking about?” Ryu demanded. “Hiroshi, why are you dressed for travel? Where have you been? Have you encountered any other clans? Did you tell them what happened to us?”

“He’s making a mess!” Lady Sato complained, her voice shrill. “Who invited him? Get him out of here!”

Rinji attempted to intervene. “Lady Sato, we must hear what he has to say first. Lord Ryu, rest assured, Hiroshi would never speak one word to betray our condition to another clan. I was the one who sent him on this errand to the Matsu. I am surprised to see him back so soon, but—”

“You sent him to the Matsu?” Ryu was livid. “When we need every healthy man here, to rebuild our village? Why?”

“It was for my sake, Lord Ryu,” I said calmly, and began explaining the purpose of sending Hiroshi to my people.

No one was more surprised than I when Hiroshi interrupted me. “Lady Himiko,
please
hear me! You must know why I am here now, when by rights I should still be on the road to the Matsu lands. The girl who shared your captivity when you first came here, your friend Lady Kaya—”

“How do you know her name?” I demanded, astonished to hear it on Hiroshi’s lips. “You never did while we were slaves and you were our guard.”

“I know it now, Lady Himiko, because that was how her warriors hailed her when she captured me.” He pushed his soaking hair out of his eyes. “She is a fearsomely skilled huntress, your friend. I never knew she was watching me make my way through the forest until her arrow thrummed in the trunk of a tree less than a handspan from my head. She promised that the next one would pierce my eye if I didn’t surrender.”

“How strange,” I mused. “It isn’t like Kaya to ambush innocent travelers.”

One side of Hiroshi’s mouth twitched in amusement. “She is also fearsomely skilled in recalling faces, Lady Himiko. She recognized me.”

“You say she has warriors with her?” Ryu asked urgently. “How many? Where are they heading? And how does a girl come to be traveling in such company?”

“She is the daughter of a chieftess, Lord Ryu,” I said. “Her mother once told me that she intends to have Lady Kaya lead the Shika clan one day. Now it seems she is already leading some of them.”

“At least twenty,” Hiroshi said. “And they are coming here.”

“Then we will be ready for them!” Ryu started for the doorway. “Rinji, help me! We must rally our men, arm them, and prepare for battle!”

“My lord, no!” Hiroshi cried in a panic. “Lady Kaya
told me her purpose in coming here after she questioned me and sent me back here. She does not want war.”

“I don’t believe that,” Ryu maintained.

“You should,” said Kaya, stepping in out of the rain.

“I think the sun is coming out,” I said to Kaya as we watched the last few raindrops drip from the eaves of the shrine.

“Oh, good,” my friend said. “Now the Ookami won’t melt when they come outside.”

“Some of them don’t,” I said, indicating the intense conversation at our backs. Lord Ryu was talking earnestly with his counselors, who had come to the shrine in spite of the downpour. Hiroshi and Rinji had fetched those respected noblemen secretly, to discuss the consequences of the Shika warriors’ presence beyond the village’s toppled palisade. “Oh, Kaya, what’s going to happen now?”

She shrugged. “You tell me. From what that guardsman had to say, you speak to the gods more easily than to mortals.” She laughed, then abruptly bit it back and regarded me gravely. “I shouldn’t make such jokes, Himiko. When I look at you, I see someone different. You’ve changed.”

I hugged her. “Don’t be a silly Badger. I’m still the same.”

She was unconvinced. “When I escaped from this village, you were a slave. Now you’ve risen so high that the wolf chieftain has to strain his neck to look you in the eyes. He calls you
Lady
Himiko with so much reverence, you’d think his life depended on it. Every one of the Ookami nobles acted the same way toward you when they entered this
house. How did it all happen? When I finally persuaded Mother to let me
try
to free you, my warriors and I stopped at your village first, to see if they’d had any news. Imagine how we felt to hear your stepmother Emi, your brother Shoichi, and a whole family of your clanfolk tell the tale of how gallantly you rescued
them
!”

“Emi and the others reached home? Thank the gods,” I said. “And Kaya … what about my mother? Is she …?”

My friend frowned. “Didn’t
he
tell you?” She indicated Hiroshi, who was seated with Ryu’s family, out of the way of the chieftain’s council meeting.

“He scarcely had the chance to let us know he’d encountered you before you arrived and took over.”

“Ha! Took over. I like the sound of that. Maybe I’ll do it, once we put these wolves in their place. It would make a nice change to have slaves instead of being one.”

“No, it would not,” I said firmly. “Kaya,
tell
me about Mama.”

She put both arms around me. “Your mother is alive and well. From what I heard when we reached your village, her healing began the moment she saw Emi and Shoichi come home with the news that you and Noboru would soon join them.”

“So she has been freed of the death sentence?”

Kaya smiled. “Not
officially
, as yet, but she’s been out of danger for some time. Say whatever else you like about these old men”—she nodded in the direction of Ryu’s counselors—“they’re still the fiercest warriors we’ll ever know, especially when they’re fighting to defend their families.” Then the
insufferable Lady Badger smirked and added: “
Particularly
when one of them is protecting his new wife.”

And that was how I was informed that my mother had married Lord Hideki.

Kaya savored my astonishment. “It seems like the spirits don’t tell you
everything
. That will make the trip home less awkward. I’d hate to have to stop every two steps and clap my hands, just to pay you the proper respect.”

“How did it happen?”

“I didn’t think to ask. Lord Hideki told me that you’d asked him to look after your mother, and I guess that once he did, one thing led to another. Isn’t that how these things usually happen?” Before I could reply, she added: “Not that either one of us would know.”

I said nothing, holding my secrets for a little longer. Now was not the time to tell her about Daimu.

Behind us, one of the Ookami nobles raised his voice in anger. “What do you mean, we have to let the Shika girl go back to her men? She’s a valuable hostage, and the little fool
begged
to be taken, walking straight into our village like that. I say we make the most of her stupidity. We hold her, and when the rest try to rescue her, we capture as many as we can. We need more strong hands to rebuild our houses!”

“
You’re
the stupid one,” a second aristocrat countered. “That girl is Lady Himiko’s dearest friend and a chieftess’s daughter! If we touch her, we’ll bring down the wrath of the gods
and
a war we can’t fight now!”

The first man dismissed these objections with a rude noise. “And where does this mighty chieftess live? Beyond the Matsu lands! I tell you, by the time she sends a war party,
we’ll have recovered our full strength. The Ookami are more than a match for any clan!”

“We will not face
one
clan, my lord,” Ryu said softly. He beckoned to Kaya. “Let these men hear what you told me.”

Kaya stood up to face the Ookami counselors. “We did not come here seeking war, O elders of the wolf clan. We came to negotiate the release of Lady Himiko and her brother Noboru. But we did
not
come here in ignorance. I was once your slave. I saw Ookami power firsthand and experienced your way of dealing with anyone not of your clan. That’s why, as we passed through the lands of those clans that you conquered, one by one, I also gained their support, one by one. If anything happens to me, my men won’t stay to fight; they’ll scatter to fetch our allies. You can’t defeat us all at once. You couldn’t do that even before you were weakened by the earthquake.” She inclined her head to them slightly and smiled. “And that, O noble wolves, is why I felt perfectly safe walking into your midst alone.”

“In other words, put a scratch on her and you slit your own throat,” Rinji remarked.

“I don’t believe this,” the first Ookami counselor sputtered. “She’s bluffing.”

“Can we depend on that?” another asked uneasily.

“This is what comes of showing too much mercy to the clans we conquered! We should have reduced them to ruins.”

“What good are ruins? Ruins grow no rice.”

Ryu left his counselors to their bickering and approached me. “Lady Himiko, it seems the time has come for you to leave us. Apparently it will not do to keep Lady Kaya waiting.”

I smiled faintly. “She
can
be impatient.”

“My people will be distraught when they hear the news of your departure.”

“I hope not,” I replied. “They have you and Master Rinji. They will lose nothing when I go. I would like to tell them that, to set their minds at ease.”

“After all that my people did—that
I
led them to do against yours, you are concerned for them?” Ryu’s expression was filled with remorse. “Lady Himiko, if I spent the rest of my days asking you to forgive me, it wouldn’t be enough. That first day I met you, all I saw was a beautiful girl, a princess, and I wanted you the way a child wants a piece of honeycomb. I thought you should feel grateful that I’d noticed you!”

I smiled sadly. “It didn’t take me long to teach you otherwise, did it?”

“I hated you for rejecting me. I carried that hate with me for too long. I poisoned my own life, trying to make yours miserable. What I did to you and your people was far worse than anything you ever did to me, and yet here you stand, offering one last kindness to the Ookami! I am ashamed.”

“Lord Ryu, I
did
hate you,” I said, taking his hands. “I can never forget all that I lost because of your grudge against me. Hating you, it would have been very easy for me to despise
all
your people, but if I’d done that, I would have lost …” I could not go on.

“Hey! What are you doing to Himiko?” Faithful Kaya saw my distress and stormed up to confront Ryu.

“It’s all right, Sister,” I said, recovering. “I was just
asking Lord Ryu to summon his clanfolk so that I can make my farewells more easily.”

“You want to take the time to say good-bye to these people?” Kaya looked dubious. “I would’ve thought you’d just want to go.” She gave Ryu an accusing look. “Do you
swear
you didn’t say anything to make her do this?”

“Lady Himiko is not mine to command,” he said wistfully. “She never was.”

A short while later, Ryu’s message of assembly ran through the village. The people rushed out of their cramped quarters at once. Noboru and I were waiting for them just beyond the timbers of the broken gateway, accompanied by the remainder of the Matsu captives. It had not taken any of us long to prepare for the homeward road. We had come to the Ookami with very little, and we were leaving the same way.

The Ookami response to Ryu’s summons was so fast, I had scarcely crossed the village threshold before the crowd came streaming after me. Their cries of distress and pleas for me to stay were so insistent that I had to deal with them at once. I sent Noboru and my freed kindred ahead with Kaya, to join her waiting escort, then turned to speak to Ryu’s people. I tried to reassure them that their lives held hope, that the disaster they had endured was not a sign that the gods had cursed them forever, that they had capable leaders with the wisdom to learn from the errors of the past and to guide them onto better paths for the future.

They would not accept my words. They begged me to stay, or at least to promise I would not forget them. Chizu
came forward with tears in her eyes, followed by Lady Sato, who carried little Arashi.

“Lady Himiko, I know you must go home, but can’t there be a way for us not to lose you entirely?” she pleaded. “No other voice we ever knew spoke so clearly in the name of the spirits! It’s not enough to rebuild our houses and renew our fields if we labor deaf to the word of the gods!”

Before I could respond, I felt a strong hand on my shoulder and heard a long-absent voice in my ear: “Tell them you will return.” I looked back over my shoulder and saw the serene face of Kaya’s mother.

“L-Lady Ikumi?” I stammered. The shaman-chieftess of the Shika clan stood at my back, along with her daughter and the rest of my escort home.

“
Shhh
, Himiko. We don’t want the Ookami knowing they could’ve had a clan chieftess as their hostage. Some of them might get bad ideas.”

“But—but—”

Kaya chuckled. “I persuaded Mother to let me come after you, but I couldn’t convince her to let me do it alone. Who do you think was responsible for all the clan alliances we made on the way here? Did you really believe the chieftains would negotiate with a mere girl like me?”