Blade's Edge, page 7
part #1 of Chronicles of Gensokai Series
“I thought your friend Taka was a healer. Would the josanpu have tried to kill her too?” Ami asked.
Mishi nodded, “From what Tenshi told me, they are instructed to kill any female child born with detectable kisō at birth, regardless of what element they’re tied to.”
“How did Tenshi ever make it through such training?” Ami asked, her voice going cold.
“I don’t know, but you should probably ask her that. I imagine she’s not the only one who found it too horrible to bear. That’s why they require two josanpu at every child’s birth. They’re not only required to report on the birth of the child, but also on each other. The penalty for allowing a female Kisōshi child to live is death. How many josanpu would risk letting the other josanpu report them to the Rōjū? That’s why Tenshi has always had to ‘rescue’ girls by removing them from their families. If your family didn’t think you were dead, Tenshi’s life would be forfeit to the Rōjū. The same was true for Sachi-san’s rescue.”
Ami’s face grew paler as she considered the words, and Mishi wondered what the girl had thought all these cycles when she was told that she had been rescued and that her family thought that she was dead. Ami had known those facts since she was old enough to understand all the words that explained them. What had she thought she had been rescued from?
“Is that why your parents were killed, Mishi-san?” Ami asked, after a moment.
Mishi nodded, the question shocking her out of speech for a moment. “Yes,” she said at length. “They refused to give me up. They knew their child would be a Kisōshi and of course there was a good chance that I would be girl, or as good a chance as there ever is, but they refused to let me be taken away. They asked Tenshi for help, and she removed me on the night of my birth, telling the other josanpu that I was dead, but then she returned me to my parents the next day. And somehow, even though they went into hiding, someone revealed my existence to the Rōjū, who sent hishi after them…”
Ami nodded. She knew the rest of the story. That Mishi’s parents had been killed while trying to escape the Rōjū’s elite guild of assassins was not a secret to either of her ‘sisters.’ What was a mystery to all of them was how Mishi had survived and been sent to the orphanage to begin with. Mishi thought it likely that her parents had protected her, managing to hide her somewhere before they were killed, and some kind traveler had found her in the wreckage of their carriage and delivered her to the orphanage. Or maybe that was simply how she liked to think of it.
It was then that Ami’s tears began to surge again.
“It’s just so unfair…” she sobbed, even as Mishi put an arm around her to cradle her. “For all of us,” she said. “And all because of some stupid woman who lived a thousand cycles ago.”
“Fear can be a powerful destructive force,” came a voice from the hallway. Mishi and Ami both looked up from Ami’s table on the floor to see Kuma-sensei standing in the doorway.
“Imagine,” he continued, as he stepped inside the room and sat down on the floor with his back to the wall, “what it must have been like to live in fear for a hundred cycles.”
“A hundred cycles? I thought there was only ever one leader of the Yūwaku,” Mishi said.
Kuma-sensei nodded. “Kisōshi used to live longer than most people,” he replied. “They used to be much stronger in general. Cutting out half of the Kisōshi in the world for the past thousand cycles has made us weaker than we ever used to be. But Hasaki-san was born from two Kisōshi in a time when Kisōshi were stronger, and she lived for well over two hundred cycles. So imagine, if you can, living in fear of all female Kisōshi for over a hundred cycles. And then think, what would you do when you finally managed to rid yourself of the woman who had either forced, recruited, or killed EVERY female Kisōshi in all of Gensokai to serve her, such that for almost a hundred cycles every female Kisōshi had been a member of the Yūwaku and a party to all the atrocities they committed? Would you ever trust another female Kisōshi?”
Mishi tried to think of it that way, but there was no part of her that thought any of those facts would make her able to drown a baby.
She must have spoken some part of that aloud, for Kuma-sensei said, “Yes, but what if you weren’t going to drown the babies yourself, only force someone else to do it for you?”
Mishi’s stomach turned at the thought and Ami’s sobs redoubled.
“I’m sorry, Ami-chan. I didn’t come here to make you feel worse about the Rōjū’s crimes. I merely heard you speaking and wanted to try to explain that, from the perspective of the first Rōjū council, they were merely protecting the people.”
Mishi shivered at the thought. How many baby girls had died in order to protect the people? As Ami continued to cry into her shoulder, Mishi wondered how long it would take for the girl to adjust to the fact that the world was sometimes an awful place. Then there was a soft tap on the door and they all looked up to see Sachi in the hallway holding a tray.
“I brought tea,” she said, her cheeks flushing as though she had been caught doing something naughty.
“And Ami’s favorite mochi,” she added, as she crossed the room and set the tray of hot tea and sweet rice cakes in the middle of the low table where Ami and Mishi still sat. She crossed back to the door almost as soon as she’d set the tray down, but she turned just before she crossed the threshold to the hallway.
“It’s not all bad, Ami-san,” she said, her voice sounding the most unsure that Mishi had ever heard it. “If not for the horrible Rōjū and their crimes I would never have gotten to have two such beautiful sisters.” Red flushed not only her cheeks, but all the way down her neck, and she turned and left the room as quickly as she had come.
Mishi caught Kuma-sensei smiling at the doorway before he coughed to clear his throat.
“I will leave you two girls to enjoy Sachi-san’s gift,” he said, as he stood up and headed for the door. “Certainly we have much to be thankful for,” he added, just before he exited the room and slid the shoji closed behind him.
Mishi turned to see Ami’s eyes wide with wonder even as she reached for a rice cake, and Mishi marveled at how beautiful and cruel the world could be, all at once.
~~~
Mishi knocked gently on the sliding door before her and listened for an answer.
“Come in,” came the soft reply within.
Mishi slid the door back, stepped through, and found Sachi sitting on the floor before her low table, a scroll of parchment and ink well in front of her and a thin calligraphy brush in her hand.
“What is it, Mishi-san?” the older girl asked, without looking up. Mishi simply watched her older ‘sister’ write for a while. Her black hair cascaded around her shoulders as her hands moved with systematic grace, and her eyes never strayed from the characters she created.
“It was kind, what you did for Ami-san today,” Mishi said, after a long silence.
Sachi shrugged gently, careful not to remove her brush from the parchment. “I remember the sadness I felt when I learned the truth of what the Rōjū were capable of… I cried long into the night. Ami-chan was very little then, I doubt she remembers. But one of the older girls who was still here then did something similar for me.”
“Still, it was kind of you.”
Sachi finally put down her brush, and turned to look at Mishi.
“Is it really so surprising that I would do something kind for my sisters?”
Mishi looked into the almond colored eyes of her elder sister and raised an eyebrow.
“I think you’ve done your best to make us think so,” she replied after a moment.
That caused Sachi’s lip to curl at one end and she turned her body fully around to look at Mishi.
“I’ve known Ami-san since she was a baby. Even if she annoys me at times, I do love her.”
Mishi nodded. She thought she understood the feeling, but she’d never had a true sister, only Taka. She supposed the feeling was similar. She still felt Taka’s absence every day, even three cycles after they had been separated. Would Sachi miss Ami like that if the two were ever forced apart?
“Ami-san and I may not be as close as we could be, and I know I was horrible to you when you first arrived,” Sachi continued. “But I love you both, and I want to help you when you’re hurting.”
That startled Mishi. She had understood Sachi’s feelings towards Ami, but she’d never expected to hear herself included in that bond.
“Don’t look so surprised, Mishi-chan,” Sachi said, her eyes glinting with humor. “I know you think I’m a horrible cow, but I do care about you. You’re my sister. We must care for one another. We have no one else.”
Mishi thought about that for a moment. She understood the word ‘sister’ as an idea. She had even begun to understand the concept as applied to Sachi and Ami, two girls who were not actually related, but had grown up together as sisters and whose bond was that of sisterhood as Kisōshi. But Mishi had never truly considered herself one of them, not really.
“I suppose I’m not used to the idea of having family,” Mishi said. “Orphans don’t have family, even though we have each other…”
Sachi narrowed her eyes at Mishi and tilted her head to one side. She thought for a moment before she replied.
“Kuma-sensei once told me that the family we choose is even stronger than the family we’re given.”
Mishi thought about that. All that she knew of her true family she had learned from Kuma-sensei. The only family she had in this life was her chosen one. Eventually she nodded. Then something occurred to her and she was shocked that it had never occurred to her before.
“Sachi-san, are you ever allowed to see them? Your given family, I mean.”
Sachi’s eyes clouded briefly and she shook her head.
“No. No, they think that I’m dead. They were told that I died at birth, just as all parents of female Kisōshi are. It’s the only way to keep them safe. If the Rōjū were ever to discover that I still lived, and if they ever suspected that my family knew… it would put all of our lives at risk.”
Mishi nodded. She had known that her sisters had been rescued from birth, but she hadn’t really understood the full implications of the manner of their rescue. Was it worse to be a true orphan, or to know that your family still lived, had wanted to keep you, but had never had the chance? Mishi sighed, and then did something that she had never done before.
She knelt beside Sachi and embraced her. Sachi hesitated for a moment, but then returned the embrace, and if warm liquid slid from their eyes and mingled on the cheeks pressed side to side, no one ever spoke of it.
TAKA SIGHED AND mopped the sweat from her brow with the sleeve of her kimono. The candles they had lit at the beginning of Kiko’s labour were mere puddles, and one of the other girls had been sent to bring more to replace them. Between the heat from the candles and the bodies crammed into the small birthing room, the room suffered from an overpowering odor of sweat, laced with a slight tang of fear. Taka’s job on this rotation was to keep track of Kiko’s pulse and breathing. She held her friend’s hand for comfort, and touched her wrist lightly to keep track of her pulse. Every now and again she tried to smile reassuringly at Kiko, but the girl barely ever opened her eyes, her pain was so great.
Sweat drenched Kiko’s body from head to toe, and every few minutes her whole body contracted in what seemed to Taka to be the worst pain a person could endure. She didn’t seem to be doing well, but so far the instructors didn’t seem overly concerned.
Taka and her classmates had been rotating through the birthing room for a fifth of a candlestick each. It was a practical exam for them, and they had been split into five groups of three. Taka was just starting her second rotation with another two girls from her class when the candlesticks were replaced. She was already exhausted, she couldn’t imagine how Kiko was feeling.
In the past few tendays the instructors had become more and more convinced that Kiko carried twins. Taka had to admit that it seemed likely. She had been sorely tempted to check using kisō, but it seemed there was never a time in which she could do so safely without anyone noticing. She had tried once, in the middle of the night, to see how many minds responded from Kiko’s futon (two, three?) but there was some form of protective barrier between her mind and the other girl’s. She thought she might be able to get around it, but not without the risk of alerting whoever had put it there. If it had been Kiko that wasn’t a great risk, but if it hadn’t been… She decided her curiosity wasn’t worth possibly alerting the instructors to the abilities that she wasn’t supposed to possess.
As Kiko’s belly had grown larger than anyone had expected, the rest of her seemed to be slowly disappearing. She was getting thinner and thinner, and while the instructors assured Taka and her classmates that this was not unusual for such a young girl who was pregnant, they also admitted that it wasn’t healthy for the mother or the babes.
Taka had been worried for her friend for tendays now, and had actually been somewhat relieved when Kiko went into labor a full moon before her predicted birthing time. If she did carry twins, this was perfectly normal. If not, it seemed that the baby was large enough that an early birth would be unlikely to harm it. Either way, Taka was hopeful that with the babies out in the world Kiko would be able to regain her health.
It wasn’t until Taka’s third round of assisting in the birthing room that Kiko started screaming. Taka scrambled to Kiko’s side to find out what was wrong. Kiko couldn’t take breath to explain, so Taka moved to the foot of the bed and was horrified at the amount of blood that she saw there. Kiko screamed again, and the instructor who had been leading them pushed Taka out of the way.
“What is it?” she asked the girl. “Where is the pain?”
But the only response she got was another scream, followed by more blood.
Taka tried to fight her way back to Kiko. She wanted to hold her hand, and she wanted to use her kisō to sense for injuries. She could help, she was sure of it, but an instructor had grabbed her arms and was pulling her away from the raised futon on which Kiko lay. Taka didn’t know where the extra instructors had suddenly come from. Originally there had only been one instructor there to monitor the girls as they performed their practical, but all at once there were five of them in the room, three of them engaged in holding back the three josanpu in training.
“Get out!” screamed the lead instructor.
“I can help!” Taka yelled in response. “Let me help!”
The instructor holding her pushed her towards the door.
“There’s nothing you can do that a fully trained josanpu can’t do. Now get out. We need to work.”
She was shoved out of the door, along with the other two girls who had been testing with her.
Taka blustered at the door that had been slammed in her face, with two voices fighting in her mind for supremacy. Part of her wanted to rush back into the room and heal her friend. She knew that she could do it, that she was a better healer than any of the instructors at this school, but another part of her screamed that the action would be foolhardy. She would be exposing herself and risking everything. The Josankō would have her locked up, or worse, if she revealed what she was truly capable of. The first part of her insisted that it would be worth it if she could save the life of her friend, but the second part tried to convince her that the josanpu and healers would know enough to help Kiko.
Deep down, Taka knew better. Her friend was in danger, she had to help.
She pushed against the door. It was locked. She shoved it. It held. She threw herself against it. It didn’t move. She backed up, charged the door at full speed and… she bounced off. She knocked loudly and began to yell.
Suddenly, the door before her opened. She didn’t wait for anything to be said, she simply launched herself into the room.
“Are you trying to kill her?” shouted the instructor who grabbed her around the waist and began dragging her from the room.
“I can help!” Taka shouted in the woman’s face as she struggled to make her way to Kiko’s bedside. “Please, let me help.”
“We do not need an untrained novice in this room, and you are frightening Kiko-san. If you continue to distract us, Kami-sama help her. Be silent!”
Without waiting for a response from Taka, the woman threw her from the room and slammed the door. Taka was left in a stunned silence on the other side. She pushed once more against the door, but it was locked again, barred from the inside.
Taka pushed her kisō out to Kiko to see how she fared, and screamed when she made contact and her friend’s pain flooded her. She beat her fists against the door and shouted to be allowed in to help her friend. She no longer cared if she was caught and killed for revealing her kisō. All that mattered was helping Kiko and keeping her alive.
She screamed until she could hear nothing else, until her whole body was numb to everything but the feel of the wood beneath her hand. She never heard the instructor walk up behind her, never noticed the thick hand that clamped itself on the base of her neck, or the kisō that coursed through her and brought blackness to her world, until it was too late.
TAKA LET THE tears wash down her cheeks and tried to pretend that the smoke was making her eyes water. None of the other girls were crying.
The wind threw the acrid smell of smoke into her nostrils, and she thought it wouldn’t be difficult for anyone to believe that that was the reason she cried. When she was overcome with the urge to sob she pretended it was a fit of coughing. One of the other girls asked her if she was alright. She wasn’t alright. She wasn’t sure she would ever be alright again.
She had failed her friend. She had let the instructors push her out of the birthing room, and Kiko had died. She could have stopped it. She knew it in a place beyond reason, with a physical surety that made her feel weak and hollowed. Her kisō was strong enough to have healed Kiko’s bleeding. The instructors would have punished her for it, might have even killed her for it, but Kiko would be alive and mother to two tiny babies that Taka had never even gotten a chance to see before she had been rendered unconscious by one of the instructors.
