The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) (57 page)

Heggenauer reddened even more and he snatched up his mace from the floor. Tilda took a long step backward without thinking about it, but Shikashe moved in front of the priest, held up a warding hand in front of his face, and spoke in Ashinese. Amatesu quickly translated.

“
Brother Heggenauer, you are a good man, and his lordship Uriako Shikashe-sama has no wish to fight you. But he will not permit you to menace the Madame Nesha-tari, as she is under his protection. Please, Brother. Stand at peace.”

Heggenauer looked between the two Far Westerners. “How can you people be in this woman’s service? How much gold does it take to buy your honor?”

Shikashe shoved Heggenauer hard in the chest, but the priest from Exland was as stoutly built as the samurai and a good deal taller. He grabbed Shikashe’s wrist with his left hand, still holding his mace at his side, and the two butted together like bulls. Amatesu sprang forward and tried to worm between them, shouting please and stop in Codian and probably in Ashinese as well. Tilda felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Blue sparks were snapping between Nesha-tari’s fingers.

John Deskata put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, so piercing and sharp that everyone winced and looked at him.

The one-time Centurion of the Codian Legions shook his head and gave everyone in the room a look of profound disgust, the sort of look that a drill sergeant would level on an utterly incompetent band of raw recruits. He had stood up and was buckling on his breastplate, and when it was secure he sheathed his sword at his side and hoisted his tower shield. He spoke as he walked for the door.

“
While you jackasses sort this out, I’ll be on the roof watching for devils, or demons, or dragons creeping up on us. And if any of you harebrained, pigheaded, halfwits are still alive come morning, you might recollect that we have a Duchess to rescue? Anyone? A wizard and a book, the very thought of which almost made a couple hundred wugs and hobgoblins shat themselves? Does any of this ring a bell within any of your thick skulls?”

Deskata had reached the door, which he jerked open. He turned and glared at everyone from the doorway.

“
Amateurs,” he growled, as though it were the worst oath in any language. He slammed the door though it did not catch, and his heavy footfalls stomped up the stairs to the roof.

It had been enough to diffuse the immediate situation. Heggenauer and Shikashe had separated enough that Amatesu was between them and keeping them apart at arms length. Nesha-tari’s hands were balled into fists again, and while they still glowed faintly blue she was no longer maneuvering for room to attack.

“
Brother Heggenauer,” Amatesu said softly.

The Exlander was flushed and he continued to glare at Nesha-tari, but he did let his mace hang loose in his hand, pointing at the floor.

“
I will not cooperate with a woman in thrall to an evil Dragon,” he said. “Her motives for being here are too clouded.”

“
Brother Heggenauer,” Amatesu said again, and waited until he looked at her.

“
If you will not associate with the Madame Nesha-tari because of the one she may serve, then surely you cannot cooperate with me. I have served evil. As has his lordship Uriako-sama. Both of us have in fact done great evil, in our time.”

Tilda blinked at the shukenja, and Heggenauer frowned down at her.

“
I find that hard to believe, Miss Amatesu,” he said.

“
It is only true.”

Amatesu looked at Shikashe, who had backed off a step and stood watching Heggenauer. The samurai met Amatesu’s gaze for a moment, and nodded. The woman lowered her eyes to the floor. They exchanged a few quiet words, and Amatesu took a deep breath. She swallowed, and began speaking, and she spoke for a long time.

*

Once upon a time, on the northern-most island of Ashinan which is called Korusbo as it is the place where in winter the Gendji cranes come in pairs to dance on the snow by the rivers, there lived a young swordsman of great prospect. Though his family was of the native Korus people rather than of the overlord Ashinese, the young man’s skill was such that he was accepted as a retainer of the
daimyo
, that is chief, of the region. The young swordsman was trained in the ways of the warrior that are called
bushido,
and he became
samurai
in his daimyo’s service.

When his daimyo made war on his neighbors the young samurai served his master faithfully and well, and for this he was rewarded with the prized fiefdom of Sekibune, through which a great river flows to the sea and where the hills are all covered with tall trees straight as arrows that can be used for many things. It was the finest fiefdom in all the daimyo’s lands and when it was given to the young man of the Korus people, some among the lord’s Ashinese retainers took it hard. These men grew jealous that the daimyo should show such favor to a man who was both young and a foreigner in their eyes, though it was they who had come to Korusbo from Great Ashinan.

With his high reputation and rich fiefdom the young samurai was fit to take a goodly wife, and though his daimyo had a beautiful daughter of the correct age, it happened that the samurai came to be enamored of another. She was an Ashinese noblewoman of great virtue and beauty who came to visit Korusbo from the main island, where her family was high in the Shogun’s court. Her name was Matsuko, and she came to Korusbo in winter to see the dancing of the Gendji cranes by the river in Sekibune. The master of that place took her to see the birds, dancing two-by-two, and there he fell in love with her, and she with him. The two were soon wed.

Then did the jealous retainers of the daimyo whisper to their lord that his favored samurai had affronted him by not asking for the daimyo’s daughter to be his wife. What was more, they said that in marrying Matsuko the samurai sought only to forge a tie to the Shogun’s court in Ashinan, which someday would allow him to become lord beyond Sekibune. The daimyo listened to their poison words and when in due time the couple had as their first child a girl they called Fu-Shora, he made as his gift to them a young woman from the village of Mabinuma. She came to the samurai’s house to serve Matsuko and was welcomed, but the gift was not as it seemed. The people of Mabinuma were of the secret clans known as the
ninja
, and they spent all of their days practicing the ways of stealth, and of trickery, and of living in shadow. The young woman came not as a simple servant of Matsuko and her new child, but as the eyes and the ears of the daimyo within the samurai’s house.

For a time there was peace in the daimyo’s lands and all prospered, though none quite so much as did the samurai whose fief of Sekibune was by the river and the sea. He was a just ruler and Matsuko was wise, and together they made Sekibune a pleasant place for its people, and in turn they were blessed with a fine son who they named Shikorus. On a high hill in the timber above the mouth of the river with the rocky coast all around, the samurai made a great house in which the family lived. In winter they had only to step out from their front door to see the Gendji cranes dancing by the river in pairs, with the light feet of the graceful birds never breaking the crust of the snow.

In time it came to be that all of the most important visitors to the daimyo’s land, be they Ashinese nobles, representatives from the Celestial Empire on Cho Lung, or even traders from distant Miilark, all alike would come to Sekibune when they were on Korusbo, and the hospitality of the samurai’s house became as renown as had been the skill of his sword in the time of war. The daimyo’s jealous retainers never ceased to whisper in his ears, and though the woman he had put in the samurai’s house as a spy told him truthfully that the man never spoke a word against his master, nor suffered to hear one from another, the poison within the daimyo’s heart only festered, and grew.

In a year when the winter was exceptionally hard the daimyo was persuaded to offer his samurai a quest, which all believed the man would surely refuse to the great detriment of his increasing honor. He was told he must go north and into the deep mountains, where no man goes in winter, there to find the blades of the great hero Ozari Ieysuna who had perished there centuries before. Though the samurai knew the peril of such a quest, it was not within him to decline. His wife and children wept for him and begged him not to go, for in winter fierce spirits dwelled in the icy mountains. Yet the samurai would refuse no request of his daimyo, and so he went away from Matsuko and his little children Fu-Shora and Shikorus, and he turned his face to the north.

When winter turned to spring, he did not return, and neither as spring became summer, nor as summer changed to fall. It was believed by all that the samurai had perished, and though his family was left in possession of Sekibune and their fine house, they wore the colors of mourning and were aggrieved all of their days. Yet when winter came again, and the cranes returned to dance by the river, then did the samurai come down out of the mountains of the north. He brought with him the two swords of Ozari Ieysuna, the long
katana
that is called the Breath of Winter and the short
wakizashi
that is called the Knife of Ice. Then his fame knew no bounds in all of Ashinan, yet he cared for it not for his joy was all in returning to his family. But his return brought no joy to his jealous master.

The daimyo demanded that the swords be given to him, but the samurai said this was a thing that he could not do for the blades had been given unto him as a sacred trust by a spirit of the mountains. Then was the daimyo greatly wrathful, and though he would do nothing openly against so great a hero he had in his power more shadowy means. In his poisoned heart he found the will to use them.

The young woman from the ninja clan of Mabinuma had lived with the samurai’s family for years almost as a second daughter and as a sister to the children, and she had shared in their grief while the samurai was believed dead. Yet she was ordered by her clan to act against them, and it was a thing she could not refuse to do. She added to their food from certain plants that are known only to the ninja, and a great sickness came upon the family. The samurai proved strong enough to survive, but not so his wife Matsuko, his daughter Fu-Shora, and his little son Shikorus.

When the daimyo learned that the samurai would live he put aside all pretense of decency and sent retainers to finish him, but even in his sickness the samurai was spirited away by his wife’s family and taken to the main island of Ashinan. There he recovered his strength, and then he brought it back against the treacherous daimyo and his dishonorable retainers. There was a great slaughter in the province, not only of the men, but also of their families, and indeed of anyone who stood in the samurai’s way. His vengeance knew no assuagement, and he carried it even to the village of Mabinuma and slew all that he found there, though he did not find the young woman who had been as a member of his household while his children lived out their short lives.

He followed her trail for a year, and found her at last in the temple called the Gidoji, in the vast desert of the Celestial Empire which is known as the Waterless Sea. There he learned that she had not fled from his vengeance, but rather from her own conscience, for the thing she had been made to do had broken her heart for all time. Before the great altar of the Gidoji, the samurai brought the Breath of Winter to her throat as she prayed, and though she did not resist the samurai saw in her eyes that there was no vengeance for him in ending her miserable life, for the ninja had died with the family that she slew. All that was left was a woman who had given herself over to the kindly spirits, that she might live out her mournful days as
shukenja
, doing no more harm to anyone.

There before the altar at Gidoji the samurai threw down his sword, and fell to the ground, and wept when he thought of the things that he had done in the name of unquenchable vengeance, and in doing so his desire for vengeance was banished. His grief though would go on without end, and he would never return to Ashinan nor Korusbo nor to Sekibune, where in winter the Gendji cranes still come to dance by the rivers, two-by-two. Instead he went out from Gidoji, and in time away from Cho Lung, and in more time from the Farthest West altogether, to wander always in foreign lands. And with him went the shukenja who had been ninja, for she is the only one who feels his grief, and his guilt, even as he does himself.

*

Amatesu had spoken flatly, without emotion, but when she finished there were tears standing in her eyes. Zeb had whispered a translation for Nesha-tari, and several times his own voice had cracked. Nesha-tari’s eyes were dry, and wide.

Heggenauer stood in the middle of the room with his mace hanging loose in his hand, forgotten. He looked from the small woman in front of him to Uriako Shikashe. The samurai stood with his arms crossed and his swords sheathed, his face as cold and impenetrable as the mountains where he had been sent to die. John Deskata had come back to the doorway at some point and stood there, staring. Tilda was sitting against a wall with her face in her hands.

“
Why have you told me this?” Heggenauer asked.

Amatesu looked up, and the tears rolled down her face. Her voice remained unchanged.

“
I tell you because you should know that not everyone may choose their own masters. Yet it remains in our power to choose what we will or will not do for them, if we are willing to bear the consequences. I tell you this because Uriako Shikashe and myself have now traveled with the Madame Nesha-tari for nearly a third of a year, and no matter who she serves, we have seen her do nothing you would call evil. Though we know that at times this has pained her.”