Traveler of the Blue Road - Prologue - Waves from the South

 Traveler of the Blue Road

(Book 7 of the Guardian of the Spirit Series)

Author: Uehashi Nahoko

Translator: Ainikki the Archivist

 

 Prologue - Waves from the South

 

    The sky was a solid sheet of dark gray clouds. A ship’s sail flapped in the strong wind as rain pelted the deck. This ship originally came from Sangal. Sailors and people carrying luggage and cargo climbed on board from the harbor’s wharf, complaining about the sudden downpour. The cargo handlers hurried to secure the ship’s supplies belowdecks.

    This part of the harbor was reserved for ships of medium size. A teenage girl, Senna, jumped off the ship in a single bound and landed on the wharf. She wore a Sangal-style raincoat called an oro that protected her head and body from the lashing rain. Shirtless sailors on deck coiled up rope from the rigging and moored the ship to the dock. None of them seemed to pay much heed to the weather.

    “If you’re done working, go ahead and drink,” one of the sailors called out to Senna. “We’ll join you later. We may have to leave in a hurry, so try not to drink too much, yeah?”

    “I won’t!” Senna called back. She ran lightly up the wharf into the harbor city of Choron.

    Choron was New Yogo’s largest harbor, so it was constantly busy, even more so since Sangal declared war on the Talsh empire. New Yogo’s exports to Sangal had markedly increased overnight. Many ships also came from Sangal to Choron to resupply. It was much easier and faster to ship necessities like food and medicine by sea than over land.

    Cargo ships unloaded their wares onto carts, most of which were headed to Kosenkyo, New Yogo’s capital city. All of the packhorse and wagon drivers lined up along the edge of the harbor that was closest to the local bars and taverns.

    One of these taverns, Yuro’s, was Senna’s destination. Yuro’s was one of the larger taverns in the area; a large wooden sign secured with loose metal fittings hung over the door. The wind and rain battered the sign violently against the door as Senna approached.

    In one corner of the tavern, a group of men was setting up a target board to show off their accuracy with throwing knives.

    “Hey! Hey, you guys--don’t do that. Stop it! You’ll hurt someone!” One of the drunk men attempted to break up the proposed knife-throwing contest, but no one listened to him.

    A man stood opposite the target board and aimed carefully with the tip of his knife. He threw clumsily; the blade embedded itself in a wooden support beam next to the target.

    More knives went flying toward the target board. Two of the knives ricocheted against another in midair; one of them whizzed through the air at great speed toward a man sitting near the tavern’s entrance.

    The man appeared to be deep in thought. His eyes flicked up and locked on the throwing knife headed his way. He drew his dagger and deflected the tip of the flying knife with his own blade. He caught the hilt of the knife with his free hand.

    People sitting near him openly expressed awe and admiration. The men who had set up the target board approached him and bowed their heads in apology.

    The man who had deflected the throwing knife with his own blade was named Hugo Arayutan. He was around twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, though he appeared somewhat older. He wore his long black hair gathered in a simple knot behind his head. His expression was serious and intense.

    Hugo did nothing but sit and stare at the men in front of him, but his aura was intimidating enough to compel them to silence. The sound of the rain pattering against the roof was clearly audible in the sudden stillness. Everyone seemed to get just a little more sober when they looked at him. The man whose knife had almost hit Hugo shook so violently that his teeth chattered.

Hugo stared at the drunk men for a little longer, then lost interest in making them squirm. He placed the throwing knife down on the table next to him with a dull thud and resumed drinking.

    The tavern’s other customers returned to their seats and resumed their conversations. No one threw any more knives.

    Senna entered Yuro’s tavern and took a deep breath. She smelled cheap liquor, sweat, smoke from a fire, and the faint salt tang of the sea. The customers she saw weren’t only from New Yogo; she saw many Rotan and Sangalese people here as well. The people around her talked to one another in a hodge-podge of different dialects and languages.

    Senna hung her sodden oro raincoat on a nail and wiped water off her face. When the men in the bar noticed that she was a woman, they turned their attention on her with keen interest. She was young, only fifteen or sixteen years old, with tan skin and a tall, lithe build that made her appear Sangalese. Her large black eyes sparkled as she searched the room for Hugo.

    “There he is,” she muttered. She waved. When the men observing her noticed who she’d come to meet, they stopped staring. None of them wanted trouble.

    Senna sat across from Hugo at the same table. She ordered a drink, paid the server and said, “Strange to see you in this place at this time of year. Don’t you usually spend the summer here instead?” She rubbed her hands together; the rain had made her cold. The coat she’d bought in Sangal wasn’t warm enough for this kind of weather.

    “Safe journey, I take it?” Hugo asked.

    She looked at him with an expression of disdain. “Do you even have to ask? Anyway, the other ships are coming in behind us. We’re the first to arrive.”

    Hugo nodded. “So you’re supposed to wait here?”

    “Yep.”

    A server came by to refill Senna’s glass. Senna grinned and downed her glass of wine in a single gulp. The alcohol warmed her up after her trek through the rain.

    Senna focused her eyes on Hugo and said, “So...do you have it?”

    Hugo pulled a scrap of paper from a pouch on his belt and passed it to her.

    Senna frowned as she accepted the paper, but grinned when she noticed the Talsh seal embossed on it. That paper granted Senna diplomatic immunity while traveling; she’d finally earned it after years of service to the Talsh empire. “Seems so. Thanks.”

    Senna’s shoulders relaxed. She squirmed a little and twisted in her seat to look down at a little white mouse poking its head above her collar. The mouse twitched its pink nose and scanned the room with beady black eyes.

    Senna fed the mouse a bit of food from Hugo’s plate. “You must have been so cold! I’m sorry,” she said. “My clothes are all wet.”

    The mouse gobbled up the food in her hand and skittered into her coat pocket.

    Lightning touched down nearby. The thunder that followed the lightning strike shook all four walls of Yuro’s tavern. Many of the bar’s customers lifted their right hands toward the sky as a gesture of respect toward Ten no Kami, the God of the Heavens. Lightning was said to be the wrath of the god. Most warriors of New Yogo paid reverence to Ten no Kami during thunderstorms; no one wanted to get burned to a crisp.

    Hugo suddenly smiled.

    “What’s so funny?” Senna asked.

    He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just...we do the same thing in Yogo.”

    Hugo was from Yogo, which was on the southern continent--an ocean away from New Yogo. Yogo had been conquered by the Talsh twenty years before and was no longer its own independent kingdom.

    Hundreds of years before, the Master Star Reader Kainan Nanai of Yogo had crossed the Yaltash ocean that separated the northern and southern continents to found a new nation. The people of New Yogo had intermingled with the Yakoo, the land’s indigenous people, over the course of many generations. The languages of Yogo and New Yogo were also quite different, though they were still mutually intelligible.

    Royalty, nobility and the families of New Yogo’s most renowned warriors were usually not of mixed race, but almost every farmer, fisherman, or common laborer was at least part Yakoo. The general attitude and conduct of New Yogo’s people was also entirely different from Yogo’s people. The two nations had existed in complete isolation for over two hundred years; they didn’t even engage in trade.

    The fact that people still paid reverence to Ten no Kami in the same way here as they did in Yogo was a bit surprising to Hugo. It reminded him of home.

    Some of the men in the tavern brought their heads together and started speaking in hushed whispers. They were clearly sharing rumors and secrets. Hugo tilted his head a little and listened.

    All of the rumors were strange. One man talked about a valley in the Misty Blue Mountains being covered in blooming wildflowers even in the middle of last year’s winter. Shioro fish had laid their eggs out of season, so the Blue Bow River had overflowed with fish as well as water at the beginning of spring. The spring rainy season that year had been much longer than normal. Most of these rumors came from people who lived on or near the Nayoro peninsula.

    Hugo listened to the rumors for a while. Silence fell; the atmosphere of the room became somewhat apprehensive.

     A man cajoled several others: “Hey now, what’s there to be scared of? Even if there’s strange stuff going on, the Mikado will protect us from anything dangerous. He’s descended from the God of the Heavens. Our land is protected by that god, and others too. Who cares if it rains a little too much in a year, or if flowers bloom in winter? Is any of that actually important? If we’re ever threatened by anything that could actually hurt us, I’m sure Crown Prince Chagum would intervene, just like he did when he saved the land from drought.” 

    The eyes of the people in the bar fixed, hawklike, on the man who had spoken. Only Senna, who was still focused on reading her letter of diplomatic immunity, paid no heed to him at all.

 

 

    Hugo mingled with the other men in Yuro’s tavern, drinking and listening to news. He was the personal spy of the Talsh empire’s Second Prince, Raul. His official title was Taku, which meant “hawk.”

    The Talsh empire had gradually swallowed up all the other nations on the southern continent. Each conquest had added to the empire’s wealth and power. Now that the Talsh empire’s focus had shifted to the northern continent, Hugo had been ordered to learn everything he could of New Yogo’s princes. He was to infiltrate New Yogo and recommend an invasion strategy based on what he learned. The Emperor of the Talsh empire wanted to capture the oldest prince and use him to orchestrate New Yogo’s downfall, so abducting Crown Prince Chagum was his first priority.

    Prince Raul was still young, but he had an extraordinary gift for understanding and exploiting the talents and weaknesses of other people. He was also an ingenious tactician and strategist. He chose people from Sangal, Rota and Yogo to be his eyes and ears on the northern continent. Soon, all of his plans would be complete. The nations of the northern continent would be caught in the net that Prince Raul cast over them.

    Prince Raul didn’t have a large number of spies at his disposal, but all of them were hand-selected by him personally. Very few of his spies were warriors; he preferred to use the poor, the aged, and women and children for much of his spy network. The only thing that all these people had in common was their intelligence. Thanks to them, Prince Raul could take a broad view of the world stage, which only improved his plans and strategies. He was constantly receiving and reacting to the news that his spies brought in.

    The northern continent would soon be under attack. The nation of Sangal was finally beginning to fall under the Talsh empire’s influence after years of resistance. When Sangal fell, Rota and New Yogo would be completely open to attack from the south.

    The King of Sangal had recently sent a message to New Yogo’s Mikado; that messenger would reach Kosenkyo soon, but the King’s message had nothing to do with Prince Raul’s plan. He only wanted to find out how New Yogo’s imperial court would react to Princess Saluna’s secret message.

    Hugo had employed Senna to intercept this message and carry it here. Senna had her own ship and was the leader of a group of pirates. She was called the soul of her ship, Tsuara Kashina, because she’d been born under auspicious circumstances.

    After acquiring Princess Saluna’s message, she’d taken her small ship and sailed through uncharted waters and secret routes to reach New Yogo, stopping at small islands on the way to rest, resupply, and send messages to Hugo. When her ship got close to shore, she’d sent a discreet sailor to deliver the message directly to Crown Prince Chagum; then she’d docked her ship at Choron. And now she was here, meeting Hugo at Yuro’s tavern.

 

 

    The thunderstorm outside suddenly ceased. Hugo removed his pipe from his pocket along with a fine powder that he packed into it with two fingers. He lit the powder with a candle on the table. Sweet-smelling smoke drifted into the air around him. The burning herb was called choru. He smoked in silence for a short while, then looked up at Senna.

    “What do you plan to do now?” he asked.

    Senna flinched and looked down. “Whatever I can, I guess,” she said. Senna’s home was south of Sangal in the Sugal Sea. When the Talsh first invaded Sangal, the Sagan Islands in the southern Sugal Sea were the first to be subjugated. Senna hated the Talsh empire, but she hated Sangal just as much for sacrificing her home and her people to save their own skins.

    Even before the Talsh invasion, Sangal never treated the Sagan Islands much better than a throwing stone: Sangal had always wanted them to maintain their distance. Both Sangal and Talsh strictly forbade piracy, which interfered with Senna’s livelihood. The people who lived on the Sagan Islands were either descended from pirates or pirates themselves. They’d been forced to change their way of life overnight when the Talsh took over.

    Some of the richer pirates made a successful career shift into shipping and trade. Others acquired licenses to open shops where the Talsh empire stopped to resupply. Pirates with less money and influence weren’t able to afford licenses, so they had little choice but to keep being pirates in secret.

    Senna owned her own ship, but she was far too poor to afford a trading license. She’d been as careful as she knew how, but it was no surprise when the Talsh caught her.

    Senna sighed in relief as she looked down at her letter of diplomatic immunity.

    “Talsh is always hungry for news,” she said. “I could gather it for them. I’m sure they’d pay well. I can’t work on land for long...hm. Maybe I should try fishing? But then I’d need a fishing license. Why does everything cost so much money?”

    Hugo listened to her complaints in silence, then said, “Consider your options. What could you do that would give you the most freedom?”

    Senna glanced sidelong at Hugo, trying to figure out if his question was serious.

    “Probably trade,” she muttered.

    Hugo nodded. “I know you’re not sure what you want to do yet, but if you bought a trading license, you could make enough money to expand into fishing or other industries, right?”

    Senna’s eyes shone. “Well...yeah. I guess I could.”

    “Then let’s talk about getting you enough money for a trading license,” Hugo said. “I have work for you, if you want it. I can’t tell you all the details now, but it’ll probably be dangerous. If you do it, you’ll own your ship outright again and make a lot of money on top of that. You’ll also get to work with your own crew.”

    Senna’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “That’s awfully generous. But I imagine I won’t be working with only my crew. Who else is involved?” Her expression became serious. “The usual, I take it?”

    Hugo smiled.

    Senna looked troubled. “What are you going to do when they get here?”

    “I’m still not sure,” Hugo said quietly. “It’s my job to find things out and figure out how to use information. I can’t decide what to do until I have all the facts.”

    There was a low sound like an animal groaning coming from outside the tavern. Was that the sea? Or distant thunder?

    The bell in the harbor rang, signaling nightfall. The bell served to guide the last remaining boats into port for the night, so it rang for a long time. As soon as it stopped ringing, Hugo stood up from his seat.

 

 

    The rain washed the evening sky clear and cloudless. Countless stars glittered in the gathering darkness as the messenger carrying Princess Saluna’s secret message set foot on Nayoro peninsula. The message he carried would change the fate of Crown Prince Chagum--and the entire northern continent.

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