Yongcheow’s eyes were fixed on the air, on nothing. “He was a good man. Too good.”
Silence bloomed. Yongcheow, regaining his composure, said, “In any case, now you understand my urgency.”
Akeha said nothing. He had not been in the capital in a long time. Mother’s purges were stern, quiet things: doors pushed in at night, muffled bodies dragged from beds. Vanished. Mokoya once asked Sonami where they put all the graves. Sonami said, “Mother doesn’t leave that kind of mess.”
Yongcheow carefully tied the cloth bundle around himself, avoiding the wound. “Will you come with me?”
Akeha tightened his arms across his chest. “No Protectorate. That’s the rule.”
A medley of emotions ghosted through Yongcheow’s face: disappointment, sadness, resignation, fear. “I see. Well . . . thank you for everything, then. His peace be with you.” He stepped over the room’s threshold.
“Wait,” Akeha said.
Yongcheow swiveled as Akeha dove into a medicine cabinet. “Take these. You need to replenish your iron.”
His fingers closed loosely around Akeha’s as he accepted the elixirs. “Thank you.” His hand lingered a moment longer than necessary, skin electric against skin. Then he stepped away, out of the room.
Akeha folded onto the unyielding surface of the bed, breathing very slowly. His thoughts turned briefly to Midou. Scrub-haired, knock-kneed Midou, who took everything with the gravity of a funeral director; Midou the gunmaker, Midou the unlikely rebel, Midou who was almost certainly dead. Strange to think of those familiar bones reduced to atoms, scattered across a hillside in Chengbee.
He shut his eyes, pressed cold fingertips to the bridge of his nose.
What would Mokoya do?
*
The fierce, shining ribbon of the river Tiegui broadened into sluggish green flats by the time it reached Jixiang, heavy with silt and soft at the banks. Diluted clumps of merchant ships bobbed listlessly in its eddies. When Akeha caught up with him, Yongcheow was walking the gray-skied docks, trying to find a willing oar among the merchants sailing upriver with the last of the harvest.
“Don’t take the river route,” he said. “It’s too open.”
Yongcheow had showed almost no surprise at Akeha’s reappearance. “What’s the alternative?”
“There’s a path through the forest, along the buttress of the mountain range. It’s longer, and shouldn’t be traveled alone, but it’ll be harder for soldiers to find you.”
Yongcheow folded his hands behind him. “It sounds risky.”
Akeha drew and released a full breath before speaking, knowing that there would be no turning back after this. “I’ll take you.”
A small smile spread from one corner of Yongcheow’s lips to the other. “You changed your mind.”
“Come,” Akeha said irritably, “before I change it again.”
Chapter Fifteen
THE ROUTE WOULD TAKE two days on foot. Yongcheow’s injuries meant more precautions, fewer treacherous shortcuts. Over both day-and night-cycles they would travel during the sunup hours and rest during the sundown ones, taking turns to keep watch.
“You’ve done this many times before,” Yongcheow observed.
“And you haven’t. Not even once,” Akeha replied.
He did not deny this.
In the monotony of light forest cover, routine settled upon them like a fisherman’s net. They walked, they caught snatches of sleep, they walked again. This far south, at the periphery of summer and autumn, sunup and sundown hours matched each other in length. Light, dark, light, dark. Akeha trapped rabbits to skin and boil. Yongcheow sank into a fog of strange, serious contemplation, breaking it only to pray at every rest stop, and to answer questions.
Their first stop Akeha asked, “What has my sister said about the purge?”
“Who knows? She doesn’t leave the monastery. You probably have a better idea of what she thinks than I do.”
Their second stop Akeha asked, “Does she really not leave the monastery? Ever?”
“My friend, I’m half Kebangilan. My father is a provincial magistrate. Our village is so small people can’t point to it on a map. I am—I was—no one in the Tensorate. Certainly not of the tier to hear the whispers that surround the Protector’s family.”
“I see.”
Their third stop, Akeha said, “The gun. A Machinist initiative?”
This one drew a laugh, bitter as the frost. “If only! It was Midou’s prototype for the Tensorate. In the end, he didn’t want it in your mother’s hands.”
Steam rose in sheets from the pot of boiling rabbits. Clarity seeped into Akeha’s mind. “The guns were for Protectorate soldiers.”
“And Tensors. You must have noticed, most of us are useless at fighting. Get us a little nervous, and . . . that’s the end of it.”
“It just takes practice. Focus can be taught. Adrenaline can be a tool.”
“Yes, Monastery-style training. That will go down well with the pampered brats stuffing the halls of the Tensorate academy.”
“So, weapons, then. She must be preparing for something.”
“Not necessarily. If she could arm Tensors, then she wouldn’t need pugilists for close combat. You know she doesn’t get along with the Grand Monastery these days.”
“I know,” he said. Pride swelled quietly at Thennjay’s resistance to her rule.
“More than anything,” Yongcheow admitted, hands tense around the cloth bundle he carried, “I’m afraid of Protectorate troops with these weapons.”
“It’s only a matter of time. If not Midou, someone else will perfect them.”
“I know.” The tendons in his hands stood out as he clenched them. Akeha resisted the urge to reach out and massage the stiffness out of them.
At their next stop Akeha said, “So, about you and Midou . . .”
Yongcheow’s lowered lids occluded reams of history. “Many years ago, if that’s what you’re asking.” At Akeha’s patient silence, he sighed. “We were both in the academy at that time. He had recently converted to Obedience, and that’s how we met. He was always a radical, agitating for change. I was afraid of what would happen to my family. So, we fell out.”
“But you’re here now.”
Yongcheow pushed in the dirt with a broken branch. “The Protectorate put his name on the list. I was added by association. They came for him first. He left me a warning, and—” He hefted the cloth bundle.
“Then you’re not a Machinist.”
“I wasn’t. But I am now.” He shifted his weight. “Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not opposed to the philosophy. In fact, I agree completely. People should have access to technologies without relying on Tensors. I just didn’t think I had it in me. Joining the movement, I mean.”
“You underestimate yourself,” Akeha said softly.
It was Yongcheow’s turn to rest as the sun fell. In the soft shelter of willow crowns, Akeha watched shadows march across the warm canvas of the other man’s face. As the patterns shifted and changed, he felt something in his chest come loose.