Hanari claimed the sword from the goblin leader as we left Tamanoe in flames. As strong as my sword style might have been, no amount of strength or speed could have doused the conflagration behind us. We stepped up to the gates and found all four of the guards from the previous day dead at the hands of the shadow goblin horde. Each step justified my hatred of magi. Such power could have been used to build, heal, or create. Inevitably the wielders turned it to destruction.
Such dark thoughts made me turn to my own blade. The Mountain Cutter was longer than any katana, longer even than most daikatanas. The thin edge of my blade could sever threads so light they danced in the winds. It never needed cleaning, sharpening, or repair. It was a sublime instrument of death.
And yet my master bequeathed it to me and forced upon me the oath to use it to protect the innocent. The blade existed at odds with its purpose in my hands. I’d lost the cloth cover which had shrouded my sword in the fire. So the bare metal of the painted scabbard shone in the morning light as we walked away from Tamanoe.
Many times upon my road, I had considered giving up. If I surrendered to my father, no further assassins would be forthcoming. My struggles would end. I would no longer bring death and woe to those around me. But Odgen had locked me down in layers of oaths and duty. Each word he’d had me swear weighed heavier on me than the Mountain Cutter itself. I could not carry those words in hand and I could not drop them the way I could set the Mountain Cutter down.
And even if I did set the blade down, I knew as surely as I would not abandon my oath, I would take my weapon back in hand and return to the path I’d chosen, the path Odgen had set for me.
Hanari and I walked on in silence. Smooth roads lay out before us and ushered us further East. With Hanari at my side, I could not turn back home. My father would kill her as surely as he would kill me if he found Hanari in my company. And what a dragon’s vengeance could wreak upon a pseudo-immortal like Hanari chilled my flesh and sent shivers down my limbs.
When the sun reached its meridian height, I stopped in my tracks. After yards and yards of flat, carefully maintained roads, I should have expected decorations. It was almost absurd not to. But with the fiery end of Tamanoe village behind me, I’d been lost in my own desolate thoughts.
Along each side of the road lay chrysanthemums in every possible hue and size. Few flowers bloomed in the middle of autumn. And from the foliage between the sunburst petals, I could tell the gardeners of this road had lain other varieties of flower so the road would be decked with garlands year round.
Dragons normally had little use for floral arrangements or gardens. Moss and some luminescent fungus grew in our caves. Skilled artisans might have shaped those plants if anyone among dragon kind had been interested in such displays.
The lack of interest made the arrangements and careful cultivation here beyond intriguing. Humans fascinated me at times. Their lives were brief, as fleeting as an insect. And yet they possessed a drive which produced incredible beauty. How did the gardeners here keep the wild animals at bay? How did they prevent ruffians and ne’er-do-wells from ruining this lane?
“Pretty!” Hanari fluttered to the blossoms without a care in the world. She stuck her face in the middle of the flowers and inhaled deeply, coming up with specks of pollen on her nose. Her eyes crossed and she tried to blow the dust away and managed to spin in place, bringing herself flat on her butt in the middle of the road.
I couldn’t help but laugh at her antics, though when she looked up at me, I had the definite sense her performance had been purposeful. Rather than comment on what she was trying to do — cheer me up most likely — I looked down the path and said, “how long do you think this continues?”
Trees overhead curved to form a tunnel in the road. Their branches lacked leaves or buds, but I had the distinct impression that during the right season, those trees would have dripped and oozed color.
“I have no clue!” Hanari sprang to her feet and I watched her movements with a well-trained eye. She possessed the balance of a warrior, though she held her new sword as if she’d no idea what to do with it. “Let’s keep following it and find out?”
I nodded my head. This was the direction I’d chosen anyway. My dedication may have wavered, but fate would not release me. I had committed too far by this point.
“You know how to fight.” I spoke the words directly, I knew the truth from Hanari’s balance and footwork and there was no reason to pose a question to her.
“Why do you ask?” She stumbled over her feet in a deliberate move as she turned to look back toward me.
“For one, it takes some skill to move so clumsily without falling and stabbing yourself.” I pointed to her feet and to her blade. “For another, you have as strong a foundational stance as Wei’s students.”
Hanari raised her nose in the air. “My stance is stronger than their is, bah.” She blushed and looked back in the direction of the orange glow of Tamanoe. Her eyes flicked to the ground and she amended, “was.”
“Which is why I was not asking. Merely pointing out what I’d observed. You have been trained. And well, based on what I’ve seen.”
“I guess so?” Hanari shrugged and jogged backwards to where I lagged behind. “Fighting stinks though. And I don’t care for it.”
“So?” I snorted at her. “We do not fight because we love it, we fight because there is no other choice.”
Hanari shrugged, my master’s ochre robes rippling around her as she did so. “I don’t know, fighting always feels like a choice to me.”
My temper flared and I stamped it down. I could feel my nostrils move while the rest of my body continued the smooth gait I’d adopted. “Sometimes others take away that choice.”
“I guess so?” Hanari grinned at me and pointed to herself. “I mean who am I to talk, I lost a fight and ended up a pelt for like a thousand years, right?”
From the way she spoke, Hanari was trying to make a joke. But all I could see was Wei stepping between me and the icy missile the goblin spell caster hurled at me. Trained to the point of mastery, Wei died despite it. And she was someone Odgen would have complimented if he’d ever had a chance to meet her.
And she kissed me.
“What about you, Isha?” Hanari folded her hands behind her back, the katana she’d taken from the lead goblin waving behind her head like a shortened flag pole.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you love fighting?”
This time I wrinkled my nose and shook my head. “I do not.”
A shrug and Hanari danced around. This time I thought she was showing off her ability to move, the foundation of whatever martial art she’d been taught. Her steps were quick and light and her center of mass moved like fiddle player’s bow. She would have been hard to knock down. “Could have fooled me back at Wei’s dojo.”
Hanari said her name so casually. Obviously, she had no trouble thinking back to the fire we’d left behind us.
I shook my head again, more forcefully than last time. “Unless I am training, demonstrating, or killing, I do not draw my sword.”
“What about for cleaning?”
“For that as well.” My own voice sounded surly and mad.
“And maintenance?”
“That’s the same thing as cleaning.” I turned my scowl on Hanari.
Her red eyes danced over her feet, disconnected like the end of a serpent waving in over its coiled body. She was good enough I would not have been able to trace her feet if I’d let her eyes capture my focus in battle. “Wei made her choice, Isha.”
“I don’t want to speak about it.”
“She’s better off now.” Hanari spoke with the insane conviction Odgen occasionally expressed.
“You can’t know that.”
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“Oh but I do,” Hanari tapped the end of her nose and danced from side to side. “I’ve spoken to Inari Okami, I have been to the place where all spirits go when they die.”
“Now you sound insane.”
Hanari put her hand on my chest. The Jade Avarice blocked her from coming skin to skin with me. “I am not.” She winked and we both stopped on the road. “As least I am not crazy in that way.”
“Are you trying to reassure me?”
“Maybe? Is it working?” Hanari ducked her head low and into my downcast gaze.
“Don’t bother.” I raised my head, grabbed her hand, and stepped around her. “Death and I are boon companions. I know the old ways: all things which are born die.”
“Now you sound like a monk.” Hanari turned and trotted after me, motioning to her ochre robes. “Did your master teach you that?”
“No.” I thought back to my youth in the Western dragon mountains. Neither my mother nor my father were particularly religious. And Jinshi had been a little evil spirit, so she would have burst into dung if she’d ever stepped into a shrine. But there had been a monk who lived in the mountain with the dragons, a dragon monk. Unlike Odgen or the others of his order, this monk ministered to the royal family whenever they chose to call on him.
Years separated from the man, I remembered the one time I’d come to him for counseling. His advice had been strange and amounted to toughening up and accepting the depravities heaped on my head by my older sister. He’d told me that the way of heaven had chosen to make her first and had clearly chosen her nature. Who was he to dissuade her? When I’d told him I thought she might try to kill me, he’d told me that he did not think it likely, but that all things who were born died.
It was strange for the old dragon’s words to come back to me now, with the taste of Wei fresh on my lips.
“Whatcha thinking?” Hanari jogged next to me, her shorter legs struggled to keep up with my determined strides.
“I am basking in memories of my home.”
She scoffed at me. “Now it sounds like you’re being sarcastic.”
“Am I?” I turned to her and quirked an eyebrow up.
She tilted her head. “Now I’m not sure.”
“Good.” I turned back to face the road.
“Where are we going anyway?”
This time I chuckled. It wasn’t so funny, but the fact Hanari still thought I had a purpose to my wandering amused me in the moment. “I do not know.” Imitating her demeanor, I tilted my head and pointed. “We’re going down this road here.”
Hanari crossed her eyes and struck out her tongue. “To what end?”
I opened my mouth and realized she’d transformed my traveling arrangement into a “we.” Since Odgen’s death, I’d wandered alone in the world. The few occasions I joined other travelers, I did so as part of an escort job or as serendipity. Now I actively anticipated Hanari would follow me to the city or town who maintained the rows of flowers along the road and then to the next.
“Are you going to ask me questions non-stop for the rest of our journey?”
My question made Hanari smile. She shook her head and pantomimed buttoning her lips together.
Before nightfall that night, we reached a small shack on the side of the road. Long ago the emperor had built way stations for travelers along the roads. Most of them had fallen into ruins from disuse or had been taken over by unsavory people, demons, or had been converted to shrines.
This particular house did not appear to fall into any of the established categories. It was set back from the road only by a few yards and a well kept lawn lay between the rows of flowers and the white-washed walls. Dark wood framed the house and here and there the frame showed signs of recent repair. Stepping stones traced a curling path from the road to the house and a lantern hung on poles between the house and the road. Smoke curled up from the chimney and I could hear movement from where Hanari and I stood looking at the little shack.
“We should go in.” Hanari rubbed her shoulders. “It’s going to be cold tonight.”
I doubted either of us would feel the chill in the air, no matter how cold it got. More than concern over potentially hostile residents held me back from approaching the shack. After what happened in Tamanoe, I did not want to visit destruction upon another town from my presence.
“I smell food too,” Hanari danced over the stepping stones toward the house with her nose perked into the air and her arms balanced at her side. “Some of it smells like bean curd.”
I sniffed the air and detected tea and a few expensive spices. Would this make a safe place to hide for the nigh? I hadn’t expected a second attack by assassins after the first from the Oni Waru. Was it irresponsible of me to approach? Should I let Hanari go on alone and hide in the hedgerows lining the road?
The proprietor of the shack made my decision for me. An old man opened the door, brandishing an ancient firearm, slung over his left arm. He held a stance, supported by the door and with the weight on his front leg, which suggested he’d fired the gun before. “Travelers?”
His question hung in the air as the man shifted the firearm in his right hand. Hanari froze and held both hands up. “Yes sir! We’re just looking for food and somewhere to stay!” The katana she’d taken from the goblin bobbed in her hand as she spoke. The old man’s eyes trailed the weapon as it moved and he leaned forward.
“You come in peace?”
“Oh yes we do!” Hanari bounced on the balls of her feet and I wondered at the bundle of energy she clearly kept in the center of her stomach. It seemed eternal and dauntless.
“And you there sir?” the man pointed his gun at me and I raised my hands as well, keeping the Mountain Cutter in clear view.
“Indeed, I mean no harm upon this house. This I swear.” It was true, even if assassins found me here, I did not intend for them to find me and I did not mean for them to hurt anyone within.
The man peered at me and said, “sorry, from the distance, with that armor and that big damned sword, you looked like a man.” He lowered his gun and set it behind the door. “You can stay a night and dine with me, for a price… Two gold each.”
I almost snorted at him. His price was as high as the finest inn of the capital. But Hanari cheered and strode forward, swinging her arms and sword back and forth. “Praise the gods, I am famished and exhausted!”
She paused at the front door of the house, far enough away from the man not to block his line of sight. The man hadn’t moved from the doorway and eyed us both as we walked up. I shrugged and followed Hanari, being sure to step on the stones and not the well manicured grass of his lawn.
When we stood next to each other, the man suddenly tossed something at us and I braced myself for a fight. Once again, salt struck me in the lips and about my hair. None of it hit my eyes, thankfully.
Hanari lapped the salt away from the back of her hands and grinned up at the man. “See? We’re not monsters or anything.”
“I see that.” He looked us up and down. “You have the four gold pieces?”
I sighed and dug into the pocket of my armor where I stored all of the gold I’d made so far. Four pieces came out and I offered them to the man. He bit down on them and nodded with a pleased smile. “Well, come on in, no sense in letting the heat out.”
He nodded to us and stood aside from the doorway. Hanari walked in first and I trailed after her. She sniffed at her robes and plucked the salt crystals up and nibbled on them. I stamped my feet and shook my armor out before I ducked under the man’s low framed doorway and walked into the warmth of the room.
A single large room greeted us in the ancient style. At the center of the room rested a hearth with a fire pit and a flue for the smoke to escape up through the chimney. Rattan mats covered the floors, except for the area immediately around the fire where the floor was made from heavy stones. Something delicious and meaty filled the pot in the center while little slabs of bean curd baked on the grill next to the cast iron pot.
Behind us, next to the door, hung several gardening implements, the man’s firearm, and an old long-handled scythe which was clearly for self-defense and not for agriculture. I examined the tools and found them well-cared for, clean, and sharp. They were thoroughly used, but just as thoroughly maintained.
“Name’s Akshay.” Up close the man was as old as Hanari’s disguise had been in Tamanoe. He’d lost the hair on the top of his head and only a horseshoe-shaped ring remained around the back and sides. What little hair he had was grey, almost white. He pointed to a mat in the corner of the room away from the door. “That’s my futon.” He walked over to a sliding door and opened it to reveal a small closet. “You two mind sharing the guest’s futon?”
“Of course not.” I answered for both of us because Hanari was too taken by the curd on the grill to give Akshay any of her attention.
“Good.” He pulled the futon out of his closet and a faint smell of must accompanied it. With the sun already down outside, it was far too late to shake the futon out, so I resigned myself to holding my nose. Akshay pointed to the grill and back to Hanari. “Like what you see, girl?”
“Oh yes sir, I do!”
He shrugged at her and and said, “take it then. Do you want ant of the stew?”
Hanari wrinkled her nose at Akshay and shook her head. “Oh no thank you.” She pointed over at me. “I bet she does though.”
“Eh, you both paid, so eat your fill.” Akshay returned the closet and retrieved two extra bowls from one of the shelves. He blew into the bowls and sent a cloud of dust roiling through the room. Hanari sneezed and giggled as she covered her mouth with Odgen’s ochre robes.
Akshay handed each of us one bowl and ladled soup out from the pot into one of them and plucked pieces of grilled curd up and onto the bowl in front of Hanari.
“Do you tend the flowers and trees along the road?” I asked him the question and he paused in serving to smile and nod at me.
“I do indeed.”
I gave a slight bow to him. “You have my compliments then, gardener. Your work is a thing of beauty.”
He grinned at me and I felt his demeanor shift of the first time since Hanari and I stepped into his little shack. “Thank you. I guess I’ve been doing this for almost forty years.”
Hanari gasped softly and said, “wow, that’s a really long time.”
Akshay shrugged as he settled back on his calves and served himself his own food. Dinner with the old gardener passed quickly. His stew had been cooking on the heart for hours, at least half the day. The meat was tender and the ingredients properly incorporated into the broth. There were a few richer spices among the small bits of meat, which suggested the old man spent his money on good food. I respected that.
Akshay covered the fire pit with a heavy cast iron lid and waved to the corner of the room with his free hand. “You can set up your futon over there. I’m told I don’t snore.” He didn’t speak to us again. He just ambled about the room shuttering lanterns and then folded himself up onto his bed.
I could see as well in the darkness as I could in the light. The furnishings of Akshay’s home were simple and possessed a kind of rustic elegance. There were no paintings on the walls, the interior was covered in the same coat of white wash which covered the exterior of his home, and the most extravagant thing I’d noticed in the whole place were the pungent spices he’d added to his stew.
Despite the simplicity of the old gardener’s house, I left the Jade Avarice on that night and rested on the futon without letting sleep claim me. Hanari wrapped her arms around me and slept with her back to the corner of the building. Unlike Akshay, she snorted softly in the darkness.
