Chương 26: Book 1: Chapter 9 - The Crows [Part 3]

The house stood within the upper castle town behind a plastered wall and a well-kept gate. It was larger than either house the two new retainers had received, but nothing about it was wasteful. The polished wood, armed servants, and carefully restrained decor silence conveyed an elegant wealth. Two microraptors perched beneath the eaves. One worried at a giant insect held between its small clawed hands while the other watched Tarō remove his sandals. They were shown into a room overlooking a narrow garden.

Nagai sat near the head of the chamber. A woman beside him poured tea with quiet precision.

"My lady wife, Chiyo," he said. Shimon and Tarō bowed. Lady Chiyo returned the greeting, and Shimon accepted the bowl she offered without gripping it too tightly, staring into it, or turning it the wrong way. Nothing in her expression suggested offense. Nagai noticed.

"You have survived instruction and attained a measure of civility."

"We continue to learn," Tarō responded, his eyes downcast.

"Matsuda reports that Kume is useful and angry," Morichika remarked. The other man seemed uncertain which part mattered more. He looked over the young man.

"He says Ayanokouji is quick, observant, and has recently acquired control of his feet." Shimon bowed slowly.

"Ueda Sōan says, unfortunately, that Kume is an enemy of written language," Matsuda added dryly. Lady Chiyo lowered her gaze, though not before Shimon saw amusement touch her mouth at her husband's words.

"You have submitted to work that offered no immediate reward," Nagai continued.

"That tells me more than the forest did. I knew you could fight when cornered. I needed to know whether you could obey while bored." His gaze moved between them.

"Courage and luck may carry a man through one close encounter. They will not carry him through ten. You must understand orders, make reports, recognize warnings, and speak to men whose knowledge lies outside your own."

"What comes next?" Shimon asked. Nagai lifted his cup.

"You are most hasty, as I was when I was your age. First, however, you will eat and contemplate." Guests arrived before sunset. The chief clerk, Sano Hanzaemon, proved to be a narrow man with a carefully trimmed beard and an air of worn patience. Gōtarō sat at the lower end of the room, trying unsuccessfully to look older than thirteen. Shinnosuke joined several samurai from the training hall. Tarō greeted him with courtesy, then leaned toward Shimon.

"He cheated, you know." Shimon ignored him. Food arrived in stages, followed by warmed sake. The talk remained formal until the trays were cleared and Nagai's steward knelt at the edge of the room.

"O-Ren of the eastern landing has come, Nagai-sama," the steward informed. Nagai waved his hand.

"Let her enter." A woman stepped into the chamber with a flute player and a boy carrying a small hand drum. She was introduced as a yūjo from the houses near the river landing—a woman who earned her living through song, dance, conversation, and whatever private arrangements followed for men wealthy enough to seek them. O-Ren wore a bright kosode patterned with autumn grass. Her hair had been gathered and bound with a red cord. She bowed to Nagai, exchanged a few quiet words with the musicians, and unfolded her fan.

Shimon had seen highly trained performers in Kyoto during childhood visits. Their art had been exact, polished, and held at a deliberate distance from the audience. O-Ren possessed no such distance. She began with a song about a woman waiting beside a river for a man who had gone to war. The drum marked the rhythm while her fan became a letter, a bird crossing the water, and at last the blade that had killed the absent lover.

Grief shifted into mockery before the song ended and Shimon did not know what to make of the performance. O-Ren's gaze crossed Shimon's, and he forgot the sake cup in his hand. Tarō nudged him with an elbow.

"Close your mouth." Nagai had seen the exchange. He said nothing, though his expression suggested that silence was a choice rather than mercy. The gathering loosened as the sake circulated. Sano Hanzaemon complained about his sons. Gōtarō denied being troublesome, which prompted his father to list evidence. Shinnosuke defended himself against three accusations and admitted a fourth. Tarō became drunk, but Nagai's presence kept his mouth under tighter control than it had enjoyed at Shimon's house.

He neither accused anyone of being a yōma nor challenged Shinnosuke to correct the record. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Shimon drank steadily. Nagai watched him finish another cup.

"You carry sake well." The young man offered a thin-lipped smile.

"My family considers it an inherited defense." Sano Hanzaemon laughed, and Nagai poured Shimon another measure. The guests had approved of them, or at the very least, were tolerant of them before they left late. A household servant guided them through the upper gates, and the two samurai descended through town with their arms over one another's shoulders because the road had developed an unreasonable tendency to move sideways. Drunkenly, Shimon sang fragments of other songs from his world.

For a little while, he remembered tournament nights with his team: Jun shouting over everyone, Hana criticizing the food, Daigo playing the same old song until the rest of the car threatened mutiny. A harsh cry crossed the moonlit sky and three dark shapes glided above the roofs, too broad-winged for birds. One carried a fish sideways in its beak. Tarō squinted upward.

"River devils."

"Oh, that is what they are called," Shimon responded half-drunkenly.

"You do not have them where you are from?" the other man slurred.

"We do not have any more," Shimon managed, evading a potential problem. Kume looked as if he was studying, then he just shook his head.

"That is a shame." They reached the lane where their roads divided. Tarō pointed toward a storehouse.

"My house." Ayanojouji looked at him as if he were mad.

"Your house is behind you."

"I knew that," Kume shot back. Luckily, Genbei had come searching with a lantern. He took Tarō by the arm and steered him toward the correct street. Shimon reached his own house, removed his swords, and lay down without properly folding his clothes. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two shadows occupying the ceiling corners. One gathered above the storage alcove, and the second rested between the beams near the far wall. The chip stirred helpfully, cutting through the alcohol haze.

[UNKNOWN CARRIER SIGNAL] Signal Strength: Low Multiple interference points suspected Shimon raised one hand toward them.

"Go away." The nearer patch of darkness seemed to deepen, but Shimon had already closed his eyes. His dreams that night were full of figures hovering above the futon, speaking over him in voices too low to understand.

Shimon spent the next few days in town between training sessions having his looted armor altered to fit him properly and commissioning replacements wherever alteration proved impossible. By the end of it, he possessed a respectable if mismatched suit of black-lacquered plates, bound with white and deep-indigo cords in the Satomi manner, with the clan's two-line crest painted discreetly upon the breast and shoulder guards. He was pleased with the result. It might even save him from a yōma's claws.

Or, more worryingly, from some overenthusiastic theropod that had no business existing, yet nevertheless seemed perfectly at home in this world. Then, Gōtarō arrived with a sealed order. Nagai had summoned them to the inner enclosure. They passed through the layered gates and followed the boy toward a closed building beside one of the storehouses. In the yard beyond, handlers maneuvered a feathered fukuiraptor into a timber pen using long forked poles.

The animal struck the gate with its shoulder, shaking the entire frame before a hood was pulled over its eyes. Two guards inspected the seal. Another looked closely at Shimon and Tarō before allowing them inside, leading them into a cellar. The underground chamber had been arranged as a council chamber with Nagai at its head. A broad Buddhist cleric in dark robes occupied the place to his right. Heavy prayer beads rested around one wrist.

Beside him sat the shrine priest who had purified the forest, his white robes layered beneath pale blue and the ōnusa resting behind him. A young woman knelt at the priest's side with a brush and writing box. Her white kosode and red hakama identified her as a miko, a shrine maiden. She was close to Shimon's age and attractive enough that his gaze caught before good judgment pulled it away. Opposite them sat an old woman wrapped in several dark layers.

Age had bent her back and folded lines into her face, but her eyes remained unnaturally bright. The smile she gave Shimon was sharp and acquisitive. A thin young attendant knelt behind her. A wispy beard clung uncertainly to his chin. He adjusted her cushion, shifted her cup nearer, and waited with the patient submission of someone long accustomed to serving an unpredictable master. Two scholars sat behind low desks crowded with paper. The elder had a long beard and ink ground permanently into his fingers.

The younger was narrow-faced and attentive, his eyes moving over the warriors as though each carried a question written upon him. Ten samurai occupied the walls. Ten warriors who would prefer death before dishonor. One had burn scars across both hands. Another held his left leg stiffly before him. A third wore a patch over one eye, the scar running from his forehead to the corner of his mouth. A man near the rear saw Shimon and recoiled. His hand moved toward his sword.

The color left his face before he forced himself still and lowered his eyes. The old woman observed the reaction. Her smile widened. Tarō knelt beside Shimon.

"What was that?"

"I do not know," Ayanokouji hissed back. Two of the samurai closed the doors.

"This chamber does not appear in the castle records," Nagai said.

"What is spoken here remains here. What is written here remains under seal." His gaze passed over the warriors.

"Anyone who speaks carelessly places the castle and every village under its protection at risk. Anyone who sells what he learns will discover that loss of stipend is the smallest punishment available to my lord." No one asked him to elaborate. Nagai indicated the Buddhist cleric.

"Abbot Ryōzen of Nago-ji." The abbot inclined his head.

"Chief Priest Imbe Noritsuna, and Aya of his shrine," he said looking at man in white robes and the attractive girl next to him. The young miko bowed without ceasing to write.

"Kuze Sōtei, keeper and reader of several collections of old records; Abe Chikanori, who has spent more time than is healthy examining accounts of curses, abandoned villages, and improper burials." The younger scholar, for some reason or another, accepted the description as praise. Nagai turned toward the old woman.

"Kuroha of Ojima. Healer, midwife, diviner, finder of poisons, and teller of truths that men frequently spend coin on." Kuroha gave a dry laugh. Her attendant lowered his eyes.

"And you," Nagai said, addressing the samurai, "are men who have encountered yōma and survived." The one-eyed warrior touched the cloth over his missing eye.

"Some of us survived more completely than others." Nagai allowed that to pass.

"Attacks have increased," he continued.

"Travelers vanish from roads that were considered safe. Graves are opened. Livestock is found torn apart without being eaten. Houses are abandoned with food still in the pots. Creatures cross shrine ropes and warded boundaries that once held them back."