Blade's Edge, page 11
part #1 of Chronicles of Gensokai Series
“He went running that way!” she said, gesturing with her head in the opposite direction from where she intended to run. “I almost had him before he made it out of the office, but he tumbled a desk in front of me and got away.” It was a gamble, using her own kisō to hide the lie to a Kisōshi. It might not work; if he discovered the untruth then she would only be killed more quickly for lying, and even if he didn’t detect the lie he might not let her go. If the Kisōshi had been there long enough, he would know for certain it wasn’t true, kisō or not. Taka held her breath and did her best to emanate the thoughts and emotions of a distressed female, using a small amount of her own kisō to push those outward. She had to hope that this Kisōshi was the heroic type.
“Wait here,” he said, and he put enough of his own kisō behind the command that if Taka had been a normal citizen she would have had no choice but to obey.
With that he was off, running in the direction she had indicated, even as the clerk from the hall of records stumbled his way onto the steps exiting the building.
Taka wasted no time. She ran as fast as she could away from the hall of records and everything else in the town of Kengaishi, even as the clerk shouted for the Kisōshi to return.
It didn’t matter, the man could call all he liked; she had the lead of a handful of heartbeats and that was all she needed. She hadn’t seen a horse nearby, and the man had no hope of catching her without one. If there was one thing Taka had mastered in the past five cycles, it was the art of running.
~~~
Leagues later, with no horse hooves pounding the forest behind her and nothing but the moonlight and the trees for company, she finally allowed herself the chance to rest her back against a nearby cedar. As her breathing slowed and the cool night air filled her lungs, her hand sought out the small leather pouch tucked into her obi. She ran a finger briefly over the small journal contained within and then brought out the map she had carefully stolen so many cycles before. Unfolding it yielded a map showing just the northern region of Gensokai, centering specifically on Hokushin province.
“Shikazenshi… where are you?” she asked, scouring the map with her eyes.
“There you are!” she crowed in triumph, the last few cycles of desperation adding a deep feeling of relief to this one discovery. She marveled then at the oddities of life; the town was fairly large, and only about three days on foot from her home in Yanagi’s forest. It would take her five days to reach it from here, but she needed to resupply first, so she would have to make the detour home.
“Zōkame-san, we shall meet again soon,” she promised the night.
“Come in, Ryūko-san,” called Kuma-sensei’s deep voice from inside his room. Mishi stepped inside and slid the door closed behind her. As she breathed in, she found comfort in the scent of fresh tatami and green tea that greeted her nose. The same beautiful landscapes hung from the same beautiful scrolls. Some things didn’t change, even after eight cycles. But some things did.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that, Sensei,” she said, crossing the room and folding herself down in front of the low table that separated her from the gentle bear of a man who had trained her for the last eight cycles. She looked him in the eye as she poured tea for both of them and waited for his reply.
“I know, Mishi-chan,” the man said, switching to the name she had known her whole life. “But your mother would be upset with me if I didn’t at least try to use the name she gave you at your birth.”
A bitter smile touched Mishi’s lips as she thought of Kuma-sensei knowing her mother well enough to know how she would react to things. She wished she shared that knowledge, but her only source of information about her parents was the man who sat across from her, and she was always hesitant to ask him for details, as the topic seemed to bring him so much sorrow.
“Would she truly be that upset with you, Sensei?” Mishi asked, wanting to prolong this rare insight into her mother’s personality.
“Hmph,” Kuma-sensei snorted, “she’d probably bash me on the head with her jo just for letting you get away with being called Mishiranu. Though I don’t know how much it would really have bothered her—she would have simply loved an excuse to poke me with a stick.”
That made Mishi laugh aloud. The visual was one she had considered more than once herself, but she would never dare to actually follow through with it.
“Sensei, surely she would never have hit you?”
“Never have hit me? Ha! Shows what you know, child, she’d jump at the chance.”
“But you were her teacher!”
“Yes, I was. Was being the operative word. The moment she passed her first test of rank she threw respect for her elders right out the window. Used to sneak up on me after meals and drop frogs in my tea!”
Mishi put a hand to her mouth to cover her own laughter, but ultimately failed, and soon Kuma-sensei joined in and they were both wiping tears from their eyes. Finally, Mishi composed herself, and then she was left wondering what had brought on this new series of revelations.
“Kuma-sensei, why are you telling me this now?” she asked.
Kuma-sensei took a deep breath and locked his gaze with her own.
“Mishi-san, no matter what name you use, you should know that your mother would be very proud of you.” Sorrow tinged his face once more, and Mishi noticed grey hairs now speckling his Kisōshi knot that hadn’t been there eight cycles ago. Before she could ask what he meant by that, he continued. “You’ve passed your test for rank a cycle before most students do, and you’re ready for your first mission. You have the finest fire kisō I’ve ever seen, and it’s a distinct possibility that you can outfight even me.”
Mishi felt the color rising to her cheeks at such high praise. Kuma-sensei did not say such things lightly; he never said a word of praise he didn’t mean, and he rarely praised any of them at all. Yet Mishi had to wonder at such lavish compliments. She couldn’t possibly be as good as Kuma-sensei claimed.
“I know you find that difficult to believe, Mishi-san. Kami know you find it difficult to believe the good in yourself, but I’m not telling you all of this to turn your head. I’m telling you this as a warning.”
“A warning, Sensei?” Mishi asked, when he paused to take a sip of his tea.
Kuma-sensei took a deep breath, and Mishi wondered what it was that made him hesitant to continue.
“Your mission, Mishi-san, is incredibly important to our cause. It is also, I’m afraid, incredibly dangerous.”
Something in Mishi’s blood heated and she felt a thrill course through her body. She had wondered why Kuma-sensei would have called her to him if not to talk about her upcoming mission. The thought excited and terrified her.
“It is understandable that you are excited, Mishi-san,” Kuma-sensei continued, his gaze never breaking from hers. “But I cannot emphasize the danger of this undertaking enough. There is a chance you could be captured. There is a chance you could be killed.”
That last statement took all the heat from Mishi’s blood.
“Killed?”
Kuma-sensei nodded.
Mishi had never considered that this mission might be the last thing she did. Of course, she’d considered it abstractly. Every day she studied the art of ending someone’s life, and it was was only natural to consider the consequences of being on the losing end of that kind of conflict. But somehow, to have it stated so directly, to know that it was a strong enough possibility that Kuma-sensei needed to remind her of the risk that was ever present when one lived by the sword… it somehow made the threat real in a way that it had never been before, and, suddenly, Mishi wanted very badly to know why it was a necessary risk.
“Why?” she asked, her voice slightly more than a whisper.
Kuma-sensei raised an eyebrow, even as he raised his tea to his lips.
“Why should I be willing to die for this mission?” Mishi clarified. “What good will the loss of my life do?” She was surprised to realize it was a question that she’d never asked before, not even of herself.
Kuma-sensei swallowed slowly and then leaned forward, looking at Mishi with a gravity she rarely saw in him.
“Because it is time to fight, Mishiranu-san. It is time to fight for the world that we want. You should never have lost your parents. Sachi and Ami should never have needed to be rescued by Tenshi and taken from their families while their parents were told that they were born lifeless. We should not live in a world where any of that happens, and if we are to change things then there is only one recourse left to us. We must fight those who would continue to kill innocents.”
“The Rōjū?” Mishi asked, her eyes going wide. “How can anyone hope to oppose them? They’ve ruled Gensokai for a thousand cycles! They have an entire army of Kisōshi at their disposal, not to mention all the hishi in the land. Are you telling me that we’re going to stop them with three barely trained Kisōshi and their teacher? You’re good, Kuma-sensei, but you’re not that good.”
Mishi hadn’t meant to say such things to Kuma-sensei, but she found that she couldn’t stop herself. The man must be crazy if he thought they could fight the Rōjū! She knew that they were at the root of the evil done to her and all the other female Kisōshi for the last thousand cycles, but she had assumed that Kuma-sensei’s mission for her would entail accompanying Tenshi to save another female Kisōshi, helping to rescue a babe in arms the way that Sachi and Ami had been rescued.
“Mishi-san, I’m not asking you to single-handedly defeat all of the Rōjū’s Kisōshi warriors in armed combat. Fighting them that way won’t undo what needs to be undone anyway.”
“Oh? Then what are you asking me to do?” she asked, with an edge of heat still in her voice.
“I’m asking you to infiltrate Rōjū City and steal a scroll that will enable us to release the Rōjū’s grip on all of the Kisōshi.”
~~~
Mishi sat with her legs dangling from the covered walkway and watched the rain start to fall throughout the empty training courtyard and the small garden beyond it. The soft patter of the rain soothed her, and the smell of wet earth and living plants filled her lungs.
“You’ll need to sleep sometime,” Tenshi said, as she lowered herself to the space beside her. Mishi said nothing, but continued to stare out at the falling rain as though mesmerized by the patterns the drops made in the rippling koi pond.
“Mishiranu-san,” Tenshi began.
“If you’re here to do Kuma-sensei’s bidding, you might as well walk away. I won’t be pandered to.”
“Hmph,” Tenshi bristled. “I thought Ami hit you in the ribs during your test yesterday, but if you think I’d do any man’s bidding she must have hit you in the head.”
Mishi tried to force the corners of her mouth down, but lost the battle.
“There, that’s better!” Tenshi said, flashing her own generous smile in return. “Kuma-sensei told me you were upset, but he didn’t explain why. Care to tell me?”
Mishi returned her gaze to the rain filled courtyard, and her mouth returned to the straight line it had been prior to Tenshi’s arrival.
“Oh, nothing at all, only that he’s asked me to die for his cause,” she said, unable to keep the sarcasm from her voice.
Tenshi looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
“His cause?” she asked. “And when did all of this become his cause? Are you not a Kisōshi? Were your parents not killed by the Rōjū? Are your sisters not victims of the same system?”
Mishi resisted the temptation to grind her teeth together.
“Kuma-sensei has already reminded me of all those facts,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even. “Kisōshi I may be, and I’m grateful for all that you and Kuma-sensei have done for me, and for Sachi and Ami, but… dying? Tenshi-san, I didn’t ask for any of this! I didn’t ask to be Kisōshi, I didn’t ask to be ‘the strongest fire kisō Kuma-sensei has ever seen.’ I’m barely 16 cycles old, Tenshi-san, shouldn’t I get a chance at living before I have to throw it all away?”
Tenshi was silent for a time, and the two women simply stared into the falling rain together.
“You should,” she said finally, her voice just audible above the patter of raindrops on the tiled roof. “Certainly, you should have a chance at life. You deserve it, and so does every other girl in Gensokai. So tell me, Mishi-chan, what life will you have?”
“What?”
“If you don’t help us overcome the Rōjū, what life will you have? Will you go out? Will you travel Gensokai? You can’t take your katana with you, and you’ll have to pretend to have no kisō. What will you do? Will you teach young girls how to fight? You would be killed for it. Will you bring peace to the land? If anyone thought you were a Kisōshi, or even remotely close to one, you would be hounded to the ends of the land and killed the moment you were captured, as your mother was. Will you give up using your kisō and start a farm? Settle down with a husband and raise babies? And what will happen to those babies if they are girls? What will happen when they are born Kisōshi, like their mother?”
Mishi tried to picture any of it—farming, raising a family—none of it appealed to her. She had no interest in those things, but even if she did, Tenshi was right. She would never be allowed to have it. Any of it.
“Gensokai has not been the land it was meant to be for well over a thousand cycles,” Tenshi continued. “The Yūwaku were a scourge when they reigned and they committed many atrocities in the time that they ruled, but they were replaced by an evil just as insidious, and worse for being veiled as a good. You know the history books, you know why the Rōjū were established, but you also know the evil that ‘corrective step’ has caused. You’ve lived it. Would your mother have been killed if the Rōjū hadn’t been put in place to keep ‘another evil female reign’ from rising up after Yūwaku? Would your father? Imagine what your life would be like, if your parents hadn’t broken Gensokai law by trying to keep you alive at your birth. Imagine what your sisters’ lives would have been, if they could have grown up with their families, training openly at a school as our boys do. Imagine what it will be like if someday you decide to have children, and you can keep the girls as well as the boys, no matter what power they’re born with.”
Mishi closed her eyes for a moment, not to picture that kind of world, but simply to contain the emotion that picturing a life with her parents alive in it brought her. It wasn’t something she’d ever imagined before she’d come to Kuma-sensei’s school and learned who they were. For the first eight cycles of her life, she’d never known if her parents were dead or if she’d merely been abandoned, like so many children in Haha-san’s care. Even since Kuma-sensei had told her the truth about her parents, it was something she only rarely allowed herself to fantasize about. Why torment herself with a past that was impossible and a future that could never be?
Even before she spoke, Mishi knew she was done arguing. Tenshi was right that there was no other life for her with the Rōjū in power. Her choices were to succeed, and live in a world where she was free to be the person she had become, or to fail and die knowing she had fought for a world that was worth living in. But there were still answers she wanted…
“Why is he so obsessed with this, Tenshi-san? Why does he care so deeply? He’s a Kisōshi. He could have land, be the peacekeeper for a whole town, have a life of his own. Why has Kuma-sensei dedicated so much of his time to saving the lives of female Kisōshi and training us to fight? Why should he care at all?”
Tenshi turned to look at her then, and her eyes had lost their usual glint of good humor.
“It’s not my story to tell, Mishi-san, but… Kuma-sensei had a wife and child once. His wife was Kisōshi, though of course very few people knew it, and…”
“And?” Mishi asked, unable to restrain her curiosity.
“And so was his daughter.” Tenshi stood up then, and grabbed Mishi’s shoulder before turning to walk away. “He used to go by a different name,” she said. “But that man died along with his wife and child, and Kuma-sensei is all that’s left.”
TAKA SAT ON a fallen log by the gently flowing creek and enjoyed the warming rays of sunshine on her face. She was much warmer for having replaced the thin silk kimono she wore in populated areas with her more usual leather leggings and tunic, but winter was fast approaching and she soaked up the last warmth of the cycle gladly. The smell of pine needles and wet rocks filled her lungs, as she watched Yanagi weave vines and loose branches together in a pattern so randomized it almost looked natural.
“You know, there’s a good chance I won’t even be here through the winter,” she said, as the giant tree continued crafting the large, flat piece of weaving.
“So you believe you’ve found them?” he asked, without pausing in his work.
“Yes, I think I’ve found them. I have the town name and the family name, so it’s just a matter of patience and listening to the right bit of gossip.”
“You shouldn’t stay there long,” Yanagi cautioned.
“When do I stay anywhere long?” Taka asked.
“You know what I mean,” the giant willow tree clarified, his voice emphasized by the rustling of his leaves and branches. “There are more Kisōshi there than usual, according to my sources, and you should be extra cautious not to draw attention to yourself. Especially if that Kisōshi from Kengaishi is spreading word about a young woman who matches the description of a certain five cycle old wanted poster.”
Taka had to admit that Yanagi’s sources were impeccable. The benefit of being the tree spirit of the entire Souryu Forest was having a constant stream of information from the wildlife, as well as some of the older trees. Taka wasn’t entirely clear on how Yanagi’s relay system worked. Whether the tree spirit simply couldn’t explain it very clearly, or simply wanted to maintain some of the mystery of being Kami, Taka had never been sure. But she’d accepted his explanation of having ‘a strong connection with the land to which I am beholden’ without too many questions, even as a twelve cycle old girl.
