“Some things don’t go away,” Jobo said. “It was unwise to make fools of those monks.”
“I don’t care about them,” Sen said. “I don’t care about the capital. I don’t care about… about titles, or lands. I just want to be able to go freely. To use my name. My own name, and not be punished for what they did… The way it used to be, before the war ruined everything.”
“Then let me ask you this,” Jobo said. “If you had the chance, to bring your family back again, undo the damage that your father caused. Would you?”
Sen searched for an answer. He had known only life in exile. He was safe in Iyo’s lands, but he knew if he were ever to leave, he would be hunted down by the Keishi forces, who, if they found out he was alive, would still brand him an outlaw by nature of his birth.
“I have been told,” he began, “that if… if I were ever to return to the capital, they would either just kill me outright or, more likely, trap me in the courtly prison that my sister has been in since the day our father died and she was brought before Seikiyo. So, you ask if I had the chance, if I would undo that? Then I have to say, yes… But more than that, I want to change things. I want to help people in the world. If I can learn to do something good, then that might – it could undo the evil, like you said. In the past.”
“And this is why you steal your master’s books.” Jobo sighed. “Then, Sen Hoshiakari, what will you do? Be a lord?”
“Train me,” Sen said again.
Jobo looked at him. “Try.”
He held his prayer staff before him, and tapped it twice upon the ground. When he let go, the staff stood vertically where he had left it.
“Take the staff,” he challenged.
Jobo had no other weapon but a white bird-feather fan. He stood there, palms open.
Sen tried to take the staff.
Jobo moved like lightning. Sen had never seen anyone move so fast. He knocked Sen aside with the fan, easily, and when it blew past he felt asthough a hurricane had hit him, as though he’d been struck by a falling tree. Before he knew what had happened, Sen found himself sprawled out on the path a dozen paces off, reeling, with an ache in his side where the blow had struck.
Jobo looked down at him and shook his head. Then turned to where his staff still stood on the path, and made to leave.
Sen burned with humiliation. “Please. You must train me!”
“No,” Jobo said.
And walked away.
This was the first time that Jobo would decline to train him. It happened two more times after that, in different parts of the fortress, and the temple too. With the sound of the construction hammerstockingaway on planks of wood, Sen sought him out, hurried before him to lie prostrate on the stones, but the old man ignored him, waving his soft white feather-fan or clasping his hands to the staff as he strode on.
Sen watched him for days, but every time he tried to approach, the crow monk would only meet him with the same, blank expression, staring at him, staringthroughhim, as if demanding something he was not prepared to give. Then the morning came when the councils had ended, and the crow monks were preparing to make their way into the woods again, to return to their high home in the forest of the Godspath. Sen found them at the gate.
A hundred paces off, Jobo and the crow monks had a little cart with its trappings bundled under a plain hemp cloth. One monk was saddling their horse, a rangy, starving creature, and when Sen made to approach, Jobo offered a nod of farewell, but again said nothing, and allowed no riposte. Then suddenly the gates were open. The cart creaked, full of sacks of rice and flour and dried herbs, and they began their ponderous journey back from the gates of Kitano to the Blue Woods.
Sen found himself standing in the threshold, watching as they left. His stewardmother’s plea –you must promise me that you will do this– seemed to ring in his ears, and the memory of how easily Jobo knocked him down sent shivers to the ends of his fingertips.
They were a dot, receding on the long road, when he decided to follow them.
He stayed as far back as he could, keeping the monks at the edge of his sight as they made their way through the wood, but once or twice he caught them glancing at him, and knew they were aware of his intent.
He followed them all the way to their monastery on the Godspath of Kannagara. He called when he reached the gate. They sent him away. The gate shut.
An elderly crow monk said, “He doesn’t want to speak with you.”
“Why not?” Sen yelled. “Hesavedme, he helped bring me here, now he doesn’t want anything to do with me!”
He waited outside the gate at Kannagara for three days and nights, leaving only to steal food from the local village outside the woods, until finally, in the rain, the gate opened and Jobo the crow monk was there, watching him.
“What is a warrior doing in the mud?” he asked.
“Train me,” Sen said. “I’ve learned everything I can with Yozora.”
Jobo looked at him. “No,” he said.
