The Gensei muster had begun. The generals were coming.
Lord Tokuon Sei’i of the Gisan mountains stood before them all.Get up, he’d said.Getup.
Never let them see you cry.
Nioh was trying to go east, the messenger told them, across the Onji. Somewhere in the riverlands.
“The sisters are out there,” said Ohori.
“Where will he go?” Tokuon demanded.
The messenger couldn’t say. “He fled the capital to find you… After our separation, where he went, I can only guess…”
“We move into the riverlands,” suggested Daijin, who was Tokuon’s milk-brother and right-hand man. “He’ll be hiding – one of the temples or the barley towns near the border.”
“We’re still too far away, brother,” Ohori said. “Even at a forced march it will take two or three days to cross.”
Daijin made to argue, but his sister cut him off with a look. She was right. Tokuon just waved vaguely, angrily, and sat. He said nothing more.
“I’ll go.” Sen rose. “I’ll go with the outriders, find out where they are.”
Tokuon was firm. “No, you’ll stay here. You’re too valuable.”
“You want me to prove myself but you’re afraid to let me go?”
Daijin chuckled, face twisted in a smirk.
Sen whirled on him. “Something funny, lord?”
“You are,” Daijin said. “And you will call me by my title.”
“TheShiden,” Sen hissed, with irritation.
“Laugh now, brother.” Ohori stood hardly higher than her brother Daijin’s chest, but even he shrank back before her. “It’s still up to us to teach him.”
“I don’t teach country bumpkins,” Daijin snarled, after a moment. “The boy knows nothing.”
“Let me go,” Sen repeated.
Tokuon scowled, but Ohori’s eyes met his own.
“Saito.” She whistled to her bodyguard, the great, quiet warrior-monk even taller than Kanesuke. “Go with him.”
The big man gave a nod.
“The men don’t trust you,” Ohori said, as he saddled his horse with Saito and the others. Several retinues were coming up along the yard; here in the fertile valley-plains, Ohori told him, in the Oshi-Gensei homelands, the manor lords and stewards knew their family’s name.
“But they don’t knowyours. To them, you are a child, an orphan. A no one. They know Asa’in was your father; for some of them, that makes a difference. For the others: they see you as a mark of shame. They see nothing but detritus, the remnants and the ruin of the Gensei war.”
Some of them had lost their fathers, Sen knew, their brothers and their sisters, or their sons.
“It will take some getting used to, Hoshiakari. It will take time.”
Time before they offered him respect.
Time before he earned it.
Warriors cared for nothing more than name. He’d known this his entire life. Losing face was sin. Reputation – how others held you, with respect, or admiration, or fear – that was where power lay.
