The Initiate Brother Duology (55 page)

“Guards!” Nishima whispered, and both ladies sank to their knees, afraid to cross the deck to the companionway.

“If they see us hiding, they will certainly be suspicious.” Kitsura whispered in her cousin’s ear.

“But it is us they look for. We must get below.”

At a word from one “sailor,” the nearest group of Shonto guards moved themselves to the rail, hiding the two women. Scrambling quickly, Nishima and Kitsura almost pushed each other down the steps. Hearing the clatter, Lady Okara emerged from her cabin and was confronted by the frightened faces of her companions.

“What is it?”

“Imperial Guardsmen, Okara-sum.”

The painter stepped aside. “Come quickly,” she whispered and followed them into her cabin. Voices could be heard alongside, but the words were unclear.

“What do they say?” Lady Okara asked as Nishima dared a few steps toward the half-open port.

“A fleet of Imperial Guards has attached itself to our own.” She leaned closer. “I cannot hear…Imperial Edicts concerning canals. Something else…” she turned to face her companions. “Botahara save us! They enquire after the young women aboard.”

The creaking of the oars began again and the voices faded. None of the women spoke for a few seconds.

“We do nothing illegal,” Lady Okara said finally. “We may go where we choose. The Emperor would not dare interfere with us.”

Footsteps on the stairs echoed in the silence. A knock on the shoji and then a maid’s face appeared in the opening. “Pardon my intrusion. Captain Tenda of our guard wishes to speak with Lady Nishima.”

“By all means, send him in,” Nishima said.

The screen slid wide and a Shonto guard dressed like a common soldier knelt in the opening.

“Yes, Captain, please tell us what just occurred.”

“Senior guard officers were passing up the line of our fleet, Lady Nishima. They questioned me as to the passengers of this craft. They saw Lady Kitsura and you, my lady, but I’m sure they did not recognize you. I explained that as you were dressed informally, you were embarrassed to be seen by officers of the Emperor’s guard. Recent Imperial Edicts have been read and as a result Imperial Guards have been sent out across all the Empire with orders to make the roads and canals safe again. It seems that, at least temporarily, we will have the protection of Imperial forces. That is all I am able to report.” He bowed and remained kneeling.

“Thank you, Captain. Your answer to their question was most clever. I will be sure to report this to my father. Thank you.” The captain bowed again and was gone.

“What unusual timing,” Kitsura said. “Though, of course, the canals have deserved this attention for too long. Yet is it not strange that the Son of Heaven would chose this moment when we are secretly on the canal?”

Sinking down near the charcoal burner, Lady Okara rubbed her hands over its warmth. “The world beyond my own island is something I know little about, but is it not possible that this is mere coincidence?”

“I think you are right Oka-sum,” Nishima said. “We grow too suspicious. Perhaps it is due to being shut up with little knowledge of what goes on
around us. We must send men ahead to gather some news. Sailors love to gossip, so we might learn something of value. We will see.”

This was agreed upon and the Lady Okara and her two “daughters” sat down to their evening meal, followed by music and the reading of poetry.

*   *   *

It was long after darkness had fallen. The Lady Nishima was alone in her cabin, embroidering a sash by lamplight, when a maid knocked on the screen.

“Pardon my intrusion, my lady. Captain Tenda says he must speak with you despite the hour. He is most adamant.”

“I will see him,” Nishima said setting her work aside.

The captain knelt in the door frame; the cabin was so small that he dared come no closer without being disrespectful.

“Captain?”

“Lady Nishima, please excuse my presumption. I felt this was a matter too important to wait until morning.”

“Of course. Go on.”

“An Imperial Guard boat came alongside a moment ago and a guard handed me this letter.” He produced a folded sheet of mulberry paper of gray-blue with a stalk of fall grain attached to it. “He said it was for Lady Nishima, and though I protested that he had made a mistake he had his men row off. Shall we lower a boat and try to return it, my lady?”

Nishima felt as though her thoughts had suddenly been disassociated from her body. It was as though the mind floated freely in the air some distance away watching the entire scene. She was surprised to hear herself speak.

“I see no point in that. Leave the letter with me. Thank you.”

The guard looked shocked. “Excuse me, my lady, but is there not something we should do?”

“Do you follow the teaching of the Perfect Master?”

“Certainly, my lady, but…”

“Then you might pray. Thank you, Captain.” The guard bowed and closed the shoji.

Nishima watched herself bend forward and retrieve the letter, yet she did not feel its texture and could not tell if it was warm or cool. We are discovered, she told herself. We thought the Emperor could be deceived, but we were the fools. What will he do?

She unfolded the paper slowly as though her sense of time no longer related
to reality. Was this the state Brother Satake had spoken of? She opened the letter to the light and from her station, floating above her body, she read:

Your presence is known only to me.

“Katta-sum,” Nishima whispered. The letter slipped from her fingers and fell to the cushion. She felt her senses return suddenly, joyously. She felt desire singing along all the nerves of her body and then just as suddenly she felt terrible, terrible fear. How could he have known? Every precaution possible had been taken. Botahara save her, she felt suddenly that he must know her very thoughts, her most secret desires.

I
T HAD BEEN months since Shonto had sat a horse and despite his awareness of what was being done to his unsuspecting muscles, he was glad to be riding again—glad to be beyond the long reach of the city and the court of Rhojo-ma.

The governor’s party crested a small rise which afforded the briefest glimpse of a stone tower—gray blocks covered in lintel vine…then gone. Soon, Shonto thought, then I will see if the reports I receive are true.

The new Governor of Seh was on a tour of inspection within a day’s ride of the city. The expressed object of his concern was the inner line of Seh’s defense; a broadly spread chain of towers and, in some areas, sections of wall, built a hundred years before. Built in a time when the barbarians were truly strong.

The outer precincts of the province had fallen to the tribes then, and during a long, relentless war, the inner defenses had been built. The Imperial Armies had stopped the barbarians there, though driving them back to the borders of the Empire had taken three long years. In the end, the barbarians had been broken and the remains of their invading armies had been swept into the wastes of the northern steppe, and then into the deep desert—disappearing as they always did; without a trace.

Shonto’s own grandfather had been a very young general in that war, perhaps the only time that the Empire had been truly threatened…from outside its own borders, that is. To say that one’s grandfather or great-grandfather “fought the barbarians in the time of their great strength” was
still a mark of pride in the families of the inner provinces. In Seh everyone’s grandfathers and great-grandfathers had gone out to meet the barbarian armies, and too few had returned. It was a war remembered differently in Seh, and Shonto did not forget that.

Nor did the men of Seh forget that it was a Shonto who, with the young Emperor, had planned the desperate battles that finally halted the barbarian armies that had overrun their land. Shonto’s famous ancestor had planted the banner of their House, the white shinta blossom, in the soil of Seh and it was a story still told by the north’s proud warriors; that Shonto’s name had also been Motoru.

“When I pass this place again, the barbarians will have hidden themselves in the deepest reaches of the desert; or my head will rest upon a barbarian pole. Shonto will retreat no further.” So he had said, and though he had fallen in the final great battle, he had not retreated again. When he did pass the Shonto banner, he had been carried in state.

And the Emperor Jirri had fallen to his knees when told of Shonto’s death.

The Emperor, Jirri

Shonto had known the poem since he was a child. As a boy it had been eerie to find his name linked to such deeds, to history. A man loved and mourned by an Emperor. Had that Motoru ridden this road? It was a disconcerting thought. Shonto shook his head and tried to force himself back to the present. But the link with the past would not let him go.

A guard carried the sword the Emperor had recently given Lord Shonto—his
ancestor’s gift to another Emperor—awaiting his need of it. Even now, if he signaled and held out his hand, the hilt of that sword would be laid in his palm. Despite his certainty that the Emperor plotted his downfall, Shonto had to admit that the gift, the gesture, was worthy of an Emperor.

There were a few in Seh who saw the return of a Shonto General now as cause for concern, perhaps an omen. After all, there were rumors of the coming of the Golden Khan; coming yet again. To the superstitious, the return of Shonto at this time was too significant to be coincidence—and their sleep was troubled.

Shonto’s party started into a small wood and there was a marked difference in the temperature once out of the sunlight. Here there were ferns that still bore traces of the morning’s frost. A reminder of the true season, a season that the sun’s heat was not yet admitting. The horses snorted and blew and their breath appeared like the breath of dragons in the calm air.

Shonto glanced over his shoulder and saw his Spiritual Advisor riding close at hand. They prepared him well, Shonto thought; I am a field commander and therefore I ride. Obviously my advisors must ride, though not one in five hundred monks have sat upon a horse.

Shuyun rode well. It crossed Shonto’s mind to wonder where they had found someone to teach him—the Brothers would never trust instruction to anyone from outside, it was not their way. Shuyun also showed a rather unspiritual grasp of warfare: the Brothers had missed nothing nor had they let their spiritual beliefs stand in the way of their training of this young protégé. Even the followers of the Enlightened One had become creatures of expediency. Despite the obvious benefit he was receiving from this preparation, Shonto found it somewhat disturbing.

He shook his head and turned his mind back to matters at hand. They passed a party of soldiers, the second since coming into sight of the woods. Shonto spurred his horse forward in time to hear a junior officer report that the clearing beyond the wood had been swept by troops. It appeared that security measures were elaborate, which Shonto thought strange considering how often he was assured that the barbarians were no threat and brigands almost unheard of.

Shonto signaled to Lord Komawara and the young man came up beside him.

“Sire?”

“Are outlaws so common in these woods that we need half the soldiers of Seh to protect us?”

Komawara cleared his throat. “I am as mystified as you, my lord. There seems to be no logic in this. I would ride to this place with three men. Truly, I feel I could come alone.” Komawara contemplated for a moment. “Why…? To impress a new governor? An officer overzealous in his duty?” Komawara paused for a second as the realization struck him. “Or perhaps something has occurred nearby to cause concern though I have of heard no such thing.”

“Huh. I wondered the same.”

They rode on in silence. “Who would know of such an occurrence?”

Komawara said nothing for a few seconds. He mentally listed all the ranking men in their party and realized that they would have reported any such activity…unless they hid such information from Lord Shonto.

“Almost anyone who lives within the area, Sire, I’m certain.”

Shonto nodded. “Please find out what is known,” Shonto said. “Don’t let anyone beyond your own staff know your purpose.”

Komawara looked around to see who might listen. “I will try to be at the tower before the hour of the horse, Sire.”

Shonto spurred his horse on, looking up at the tower appearing through the trees—a crumbling tower.

*   *   *

The men of Seh were more than disconcerted. They did not know where their loyalties should lie. Shonto—Shonto Motoru had come to Seh to fight beside them. The feelings this engendered in them were difficult to understand. More than one man found himself looking at the lord, wondering how much of the spirit had been reborn, how much of the legend had returned to them.