He had to make sure she didn’t fall victim to Hakaru.If they catch her in the woods, he thought,they’ll kill her.They were eager for blood. He thought of Jobo’s lesson, of the serow they’d killed.Slaughtered, he thought now,for no reason. For a symbol. But that is who your people are, Jobo said. Those who kill. There is no difference.
And now Rui was their sacrifice. Now she was the one they’d kill.
I have to find her first.
Rui had grown up in the steep ravines and the trails of the Blue Woods. On the slopes below the Godspath. She knew them like she knew her own body. They’d never catch her in the wild.
But yet.
His stewardbrother’s men were out in force. They went without their banners, without their horses, or their horns. Instead, they went with dogs, and torches, and with knives. Nothing else would work, not in the woods. The thickets and the claustrophobic, tangled trees that pressed in on all sides: slip a moment off the trail and you’d be lost.
Hakaru raged when Sen found him. “You see what that kusai-girl did?” he’d shouted, seething at the sight of a guardsman who lay dead.
Sen told him to calm. “You’ll burn the entire mountainside,” he cried, teeth gritted, but Hakaru flared his torch toward the trees. “Nihira!”
The elder Kitanohara said nothing at first, merely sat mounted, watching the dark. “Your mess, brother,” he said at last, and left.
Hakaru shoved Sen away. He demanded the no’in girl be brought back, to explain herself; demanded she pay the price. The boy, Idachi Honnen, had been one of his; now he called for the dogs.
To hell with it, Sen thought. Rui had been forced into a corner – what did they think she could have done? What would you do, he wanted to ask his stewardbrother, if a kijin twice your weight was coming at you, pale blade in hand? You would have run.
I would have run, too, Sen thought.Hell.
He threw off the cover and grabbed his knife and the short oak sword that Jiko, the ancient crow monk, had made for him to train with. The trees bent and skimmed about above him, dried lifeless branches creaked in little snaps; the stars seemed to be falling in the sky. Dappled in palelight through breaking clouds, they flared, brilliant and clear, then were obscured again.Hang on, Rui, he thought.
He was about to leave the fire when Jobo spoke.
“Where you going, star-boy?”
“You’d rather do nothing? You’d let them find her, kill her?” Sen pulled away. “I have to do something.”
The crow monk watched him go, hand on his long wooden staff with the prayer rings on top, saying nothing.
Darkness surrounded him. Deep as the woods were, they had never seemed so huge as now. Beech and gnarled oaks curled above him as he cut across the rocky wilderness, far from the busy streets of his city home, far from anyone. Even the trees on the ridge above the bluff seemed like skeletons.It must be midnight, Sen thought, turning uphill.It’s even darker than normal. I can’t see anything.Birdcall flittered through the air. Sen looked up.
He saw the flicker of torches. He shrank back behind a tree, hoping to stay out of sight. He heard a laugh:I don’t have a lot of time.He listened to the forest, sitting in it quietly as it shifted and bent itself around him. The trees, swaying in a gentle breeze that he couldn’t feel, the same dried and lifeless branches creaking and shifting about; it was as if the trees were talking to him, whispering something as they bent and leaned and swayed. As he leaned against a trunk. As he listened.
The stars, those that he could see through the thickets and the leaves, were fainter now, a few far-off points half hidden in the night. Trees covered the rest.Rui, he thought,where are you?
Then he realized where his friend would go.
The echo pond lay still as a mirror, reflecting dim light that leaked in from the clouds. “If you hear an echo on the other side, that means your ancestors can hear you,” Rui had told him. “I come to listen, and try to hear them too.”
She’d clapped once, loudly, and the sound shattered itself over the stillness of the pond before bouncing back an echo that seemed to come from everywhere, like a physical thing.
Now Sen crept through the trees, holding his breath, his heart thudding in his ears. Finally, he saw her. She was resting at the edge of the dock, halfway into the pond, surrounded by water and draped in shadow. It was exactly where he’d first seen her, that one day, months ago. He crossed to the water’s edge, from the far side, in the woods, and made his way slowlyto the dock, where Rui sat, one hand holding the sword she’d stolen, the other at her heart. She was looking down, peering into the dappled surface, as if looking at her reflection.
Sen rose, but the moment he did, Rui seemed to sense something, her head snapping up as she turned toward the woods. “Wait,” he hissed. “Wait.”
She flinched when she heard him, pulling back as if struck. It was clear from the look on her face that even she wasn’t sure if she would bolt at any moment. She had nothing to defend herself with but the small sword she’d stolen from the guards. There were desperate tears in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to,” she whispered as Sen crouched down, coming slowly to the dock beside her.
“I know,” Sen said. “Let me help you.”
“Your brother wants me dead.” She sounded numb.
“Listen to me, Rui—”
“Go back!” she shouted. She was at the edge of the dock, water on all sides. Her despondence was giving way to fear. “I don’t want your help, get out of here!”
