Down a side street, a man lay in a spreading pool of his own blood. His stomach had been cut, precise and clean. A Samurai stood nearby, wiping his blade, his expression bored. Our eyes met for a heartbeat. I lowered my head and looked away quickly, kept walking, my heart hammering.
Death was not merely an event in Bara. It was scenery.
I found an inn I remembered from one of our landings tucked between a noodle shop and what looked like a whorehouse masquerading as a gambling den. The sign proclaimed it the “Harbor’s Rest.” The building looked like it might collapse in a strong wind. Paint peeled from warped boards. The door hung crooked on rusted hinges.
But it was cheap, and cheap was all I could afford.
Inside, the common room was dim and smelled of old sake and older sweat. A handful of patrons hunched over ricketytables. The innkeeper, a woman past middle age, her face weathered and suspicious, glared as I stepped up to her bar.
“Room?” I asked.
She looked me over. “Twomona night.”
I counted out the coins, watching my small pile of copper shrink. Each coin represented a meal I would skip and a day closer to destitution.
My room was sparse and barely larger than a closet, with a thin sleeping mat, and a basin of water with a film on top.
But it had a door.
I dropped my pack and sat, pressing my palms against my eyes. My head pounded. My body ached. And the impossibility of what I was attempting crashed over me like a wave.
Bara was massive. How did one find a single person in all of this? A single slave?
My stomach growled.
I counted my remaining coins again and winced.
But I needed to eat.
More, I needed to listen.
By the time I returned to the common room, it had filled with the dinner crowd: sailors mostly, their skin weathered by sun and salt, a few merchants, and dock workers still dusty from their labor. I ordered rice and pickled vegetables—the cheapest meal—and a small carafe of sake. The food arrived lukewarm, the rice slightly burned. The sake was cold and tasted like it had been strained through someone’s boot.
But I ate and drank.
And I listened.
At the closest table, three sailors drank heavily, their voices growing louder with each cup. They were rough men with scarred hands and missing teeth. One had a tattoo of an anchor on his forearm. Another wore an earring that marked him as having survived a shipwreck.
“—telling you, the northern routes are fucked,” the one with the anchor tattoo slurred in a thick coastal accent, swallowing half his consonants. “We tried to make port at Foku last month. You know what we found? Fuckingashes. Whole town burned to the waterline.”
“Asami rebels?” asked the one with the earring.
“Could’ve been rebels. Could’ve been the Emperor’s fuckin’ dragon had a rotten tooth and decided to burn the place to cinders. Who the fuck knows? Result’s the same—town’s gone, harbor’s unusable, and we had to sail another two days to find a safe port.” He spat on the floor. “Lost half our profit in all the extra fuckin’ travel.”
The third sailor, younger than the others, leaned forward. “My brother’s with a battalion up north. We haven’t heard from him in four months.”
“Probably dead.” The one with the anchor spat before throwing back his sake, then refilling his cup.
“Fuck you, Gento.”
“I’m serious. You hear what happened at Shiroyama? Whole garrison—three hundred men—justgone. No bodies, no survivors, nothing. Like they walked into the mountains and got swallowed up.”
The younger sailor’s face paled. “That’s just a story. Somebody trying to scare—”
“Story?” Gento laughed, harsh and bitter. “Cap’n won’t take cargo north of the Kawa River anymore, not for any price, says it’s not worth gettin’ your throat cut or gettin’ conscripted bysome desperate army shit.” He reached for the carafe again. “Face it, kid, the north is lost. Emperor can’t hold it. Question is how long before the rot spreads south.”
A merchant at the next table—silk robes, soft hands, clearly listening—leaned over. “You should watch your tongue. Saying such things—”
