“Careful up ahead, Honored Lady,” was all he said as he left.
It happened to be that we were three weeks into our journey by then. Keeping my secret was growing more difficult; I forced myself to eat at feasts only to succumb to nausea later. Temurin kept asking why I rode in the middle of the night. I was being watched at all times, though no one meant any harm by it.
My mother, too, behaved differently. Perhaps it is just that I saw her differently. No longer was she the fierce warlord, striking fear into Hokkaran and Qorin hearts alike. No, she was a woman who wore an old token of favor around her neck; a woman with wrinkles; a woman I no longer felt I knew.
Hunting was slim in that final week. I found only a few rabbits, nothing more, and I was the most skilled of the group. We were coming up near Imakane Village. You suggested we fetch some supplies.
“Supplies?” scoffed Otgar. “Barsatoq, we are people of the steppes. We survive. It is our one great talent.”
“Do not be a prideful fool,” you said, and I tried my best not to laugh at the irony. “We need meat, and grain, and good cloth. I am almost out of ink.”
“What use is ink to us?” Otgar asked. But before you answered, my mother gestured. Otgar crossed her arms. “Burqila says you pay for things with your calligraphy. Is that true?”
“It is,” you said. “My calligraphy is worth more than my uncle’s money.”
At times I think you are a peacock in the body of a woman.
Otgar mulled this over. My mother, again, gestured. They had their silent conversation.
“Burqila agrees with your idea,” she said. “She says you, Barsalai, Temurin, and Qadangan can stop for supplies at the next village.”
Imakane was not a large village. It was the sort of place that had only one market, if you could call it that—really one old man who traded with merchants along the road. As the four of us approached, we saw one small temple, roughly twenty homes, a statue of the Daughter, a smithy, and a bathhouse.
I learned later that Imakane is famous for its bathhouse. As it happens, it stands near a natural spring whose waters are said to cure any ill. Idle talk, of course—the waters did not heal me. But either way, they brought in travelers along the road to Fujino.
We entered the village, the four of us, and the first thing we noticed was how silent it was. People make noise no matter where they live—yet there was no one tending the smithy, no one leaving flowers for the Daughter, no priests muttering mantras over burning prayers.
At once, I was on edge. I reached for my bow; you wrapped your hand around your sword. Together we dismounted. With quick hand signs, I told Temurin and my cousin Qadangan to scout the village.
Sure enough, they saw no one.
We had options: We could have left. We could have checked the houses, one by one. We could have called out to see if anyone answered.
But you have never been one for choices. You had an idea in your head, and you went with it.
“That guardsman,” you said, “told us to be careful. Bandits must’ve attacked.”
Ever the detective, weren’t you?
“We are going into the bathhouse,” you said, and I translated to Qorin. “It is the largest building here. Temurin, Qadangan, you will wait near the exit. Barsalai and I shall enter through the front door.”
Yes, that rather sounded like one of your plans.
After you spoke, you turned to me. In hushed Hokkaran, you continued. “If you are up to it,” you said. “I will not fault you, my love, if you want to wait at the exit with the others.”
You were asking me to walk into a bathhouse that may or may not be full of bandits. We wore no armor, and I had only my bow and hunting knife with me. The last time you asked me to do something so insane, I woke up with demon blood in my veins.
I suppose nothing can go worse than that.
“I will follow,” I said, “wherever you lead.”
And so we took our places. Temurin and Qadangan circled around back. With one hand on the pommel of your sword, you opened the door.
Beyond the door was the reception hall. A small table stood close to the ground before us. Steam coming up from the springs fogged up the room. The walls, I noticed, were covered with stalks of bamboo split down the middle, so that the whole area was a hazy green dream.
But there was no one there in the reception hall, no girl wearing a thick layer of white paint, no man in flowing robes.
I took a breath. The air smelled of ginger and … something else. My nostrils flared. Something else. Sweet, but salty at the same time.
We toed our way forward. Up ahead, the hall split into two paths, left and right. Each was labeled in Hokkaran.
“Men there, women here,” you said, pointing. “Which would you prefer?”
“Together,” I said.
“What if we are surrounded?”
“Then we are surrounded together,” I repeated. I love you, Shizuka, but at times I wonder how you are still alive. Were you born with an intrinsic desire to run headfirst, alone, into danger?
As we moved farther down the hall, the first noises reached us. Screams. Human screams, not the shrill wailing in my mind. Men, women; both voices mingled together. Laughing, too—so loud and so long that at first I thought it was the demons. Soon we heard the words to go along with it.
“How does the water feel, Blacksmith-kol?”
It was a man’s voice. Shortly after that, another man’s voice cut into my ears—but this time it was a wet, desperate wail.
I nocked an arrow.
“Doesn’t look like it’s healing that stab wound of yours.”
It was about then we reached the end of the hall, which opened up into one of the springs. We were far underground now—the ceiling above us was rough stone streaked with minerals. The spring itself lay in the middle, shaped close to a circle but not quite. It was deep enough for one person to sink in, and wide enough for five to float in.
I knew all this because five people floated in the spring, four of them already dead. Commoners. Two dead men, two dead women; one man still splashing. One of the women was younger than we were. She floated on her back, her guts spilling from a large wound in her stomach.
Standing around the springs were the bandits: shaggy, starved-looking men and women with yellow scarves tied around their necks. Behind them, lined against the wall, were the rest of the villagers, bound and gagged and watching in abject horror as their family members were killed.
One of the bandits—a tall, lanky man with unkempt hair and a bristling beard—stood closest to the spring. He speared the squirming man. Short, shallow thrusts, meant to wound but not kill. The blacksmith splashed so hard that the floor was slick now, covered in bloody water.
“Aren’t your type supposed to be hale and hearty, Blacksmith-kol?” He raised his spear again.
I sent an arrow into his mouth. It punched right through the skin of his jaw and kept going, landing with a clatter near the back of the room.