Those Who Walk the Flame Road
Hugo stayed in Ryuan’s house, hidden and recovering, for five days before he finally went outside.
He took a deep breath of early morning air. His wounded side and broken ribs still hurt, but the cool, clear air was soothing. There were no other people that he could see. There was a house across the street and one that shared a wall with Ryuan’s, but the neighborhood was a sleepy one. Ryuan told him that the neighbors would leave him alone as long as he didn’t draw attention to himself, and that really did seem to be true. He felt lucky to have landed here, of all places. He was still afraid of what Talsh might do if they found him, but for the moment, he seemed to be safe.
There was one other stroke of good luck: though there were notice boards all over the city listing names and descriptions of missing soldiers and people wanted by Talsh, Hugo’s name was never listed. Yoar kept checking the notice boards, but there was no danger in harboring Hugo for the moment, so he allowed Hugo to stay.
Those first five days staying concealed in the house made Hugo a little crazy. He wanted to get out. As soon as Yoar was reasonably sure that no one was coming after Hugo, he allowed Hugo to go outside.
Being outside was progress, but Hugo couldn’t stay here forever. He’d sewn three silver lugals into his belt, but aside from that, he had no money. Three silver lugals was a lot for a common person, but Hugo had no place to stay aside from Yoar’s house. If he tried to go somewhere, he would need to pay for inns and for food. The money wouldn’t last long.
Three silver lugals was also too much for a commoner to be carrying around. It might arouse suspicion if he were searched at he gate leading out of the city. The Talsh searched everyone who tried to leave. If he wanted to blend in, he would need to break his money into smaller denominations.
So it seemed that Hugo would be trapped in the lower city for a while. He didn’t have enough money to get far away from here, and he had too much to blend in among the other street urchins. He was still alive, and he was grateful for that, but he didn’t understand why he had lived when everyone else he knew and loved was dead.
He had to stay in the lower city, but he didn’t know how he was supposed to live there. He couldn’t keep living on charity. Yoar and Ryuan had helped him more than enough already, and they were too poor to support him forever.
First things first: Hugo’s wounds had to heal before he could do anything. He understood that he could probably find work, if he looked for it, though he wasn’t sure what he could do. No one would hire him as a warrior, if he even wanted to advertise himself as such.
Ryuan watched Hugo walking outside from the doorway. She looked concerned, but she didn’t try to speak to him through the taramu. Hugo knew from the start that she was kind, but in the past five days, she hadn’t uttered a single word of complaint, and she always treated him with compassion. She was like that with everyone, and everything. She couldn’t even bring herself to kill the rats that came sniffing around her father’s jars of dried and pickled fish.
It had been a fairly short time, but Hugo was as attached to Ryuan as if she were his sister. She treated his injuries and comforted him when he dreamed of the fire. His mother and sister were always there, in the flames. He tried to save them, but he was always too late, and they melted into smoke before his eyes. Talsh soldiers without faces pursued him down a burning hallway. Sometimes, they caught him, and he awoke from his dream. Other times, he kept running until the smoke seared his lungs, and he woke up choking and coughing like he was dying.
Ryuan always patted his back until he stopped coughing. Her hands were warm and her touch was light. He listened to her wringing out the washing at night and came to associate the sound with safety. He had nightmares every night for a few weeks after the Talsh attack on the city, but over time, he was able to sleep without nightmares. He still had them sometimes, but he had no trouble sleeping through the night when Ryuan was there.
Hugo leaned on Ryuan unselfconsciously at night, but in the morning, he was always ashamed of how much of his fear he’d allowed her to see.
“I want to get better faster,” Hugo grumbled. “All I do is lie in bed all day. I should walk around more and get some exercise.”
Ryuan frowned at him. “Should you? Won’t it hurt?”
“I’ve broken my ribs before, during sword training. The worst of it is over, and I’m used to that kind of pain.”
The sunlight outside seemed brighter after Hugo’s days of confinement inside. He hadn’t really gotten to walk around much or see anything during his brief forays outside before, so when Ryuan finally let him go out unattended, he used the time to explore.
The first thing he noticed aside from the bright sun was the birds. There were dozens of pure white birds perched on the roof of Ryuan’s house, looking down at him with beady black eyes.
Ryuan came out of the house, startling the birds. They all took flight from the roof at the same time. Ryuan didn’t react at all. She must be used to seeing the birds. The sunlight reflected off of Ryuan’s light-colored clothes, making her difficult to look at for very long. Was the world always this bright?
Hugo watched the white birds fly off together toward the canal behind the house. He pointed at them excitedly and asked, “What are those? Do you know?”
Ryuan smiled. “Haven’t you seen them before? They usually gather on the roof in the morning. I think they want to be near me.”
“They just look like birds to me. Do other people see them?”
She shrugged. “They like eating bugs. I’ve seen them cross between the normal world and the other world whenever they catch sight of something tasty. They can eat bugs from both worlds, you see. So sometimes other people see them, and sometimes they don’t. Dad saw one disappear once, I think.”
Ryuan’s eyes tracked the birds as they flew away. Not for the first time, Hugo thought that Ryuan’s abilities to see this mysterious new world were very strange. He could see the birds now, too, which meant that he must also be strange. He frowned.
One day while Hugo was resting in bed, a middle-aged man came to the house. Yoar was absent, but that was all right: the man had come to see Ryuan. He set ten copper lugals in front of her and bowed his head deeply. “Please,” he said. “I need your help, miss.”
Ryuan nodded, then left the house with the man. She stayed out all day and into the evening. Hugo started to worry, but Yoar told him not to fret. She came back before dawn, looking tired.
When Hugo asked her where she’d gone, she said that the man had asked her to search for a good place to build a new well. In the district of the city where he lived, the water had all dried up. Ryuan could see how water moved under the earth, so sometimes, people would come to her and ask for her advice.
“You can really see how water flows underground?” Hugo asked.
Ryuan shrugged. “I don’t see the water on this side. I see it on the other side. But water seems to be connected on both sides, in certain places.” She struggled to explain exactly what it was she saw to Hugo. He understood that she was seeing the other world again, and that there were places where the normal world and the other world overlapped.
Hugo also learned from Ryuan that the taramu were like the white birds he’d seen. They could cross between the worlds easily, and would whenever there was a fire that they were attracted to. Ryuan said that places where the world connected were marked by little white flowers that she called sig sara. More sig sara bloomed in the other world than in this one, but she’d seen sig sara blooming in this world, too. She said she’d tell Hugo if she saw one--maybe he’d be able to see the flowers, too.
Finding the flowers always made Ryuan happy, not because they were beautiful, but because their presence indicated that there was water nearby. Yogo had been suffering from drought for quite some time, so finding water was always a cause for celebration. Ryuan was unusually animated as she told him what she saw.
“It’s always dark here where there’s water, but on the other side, it’s different. It’s like the sun is always shining. It’s so beautiful, watching the flowers bloom on the riverbank in the other world.”
Hugo wondered if other people in the city could see the flowers. He’d never seen one. A chill went up his spine.
One day, Ryuan approached Hugo before going out. “I promised to do some mending for a neighbor. Will you come with me to deliver it?” she asked, extending her basket full of mended clothes for him to see.
Hugo nodded. Ryuan smiled and gestured for him to follow her outside. He noticed right away that they were moving away from the familiar neighborhood where Hugo usually walked. He’d never been to this part of the city before. At first, he slowed down a little, cautious and wary, but walking felt so good that he was all but skipping by the time they’d walked a mile or so.
Hugo and Ryuan passed by a stand of flowering shumaku trees during their journey. The flowers were peach-colored and sweetly scented. A gentle breeze wafted their scent through the air. It wasn’t winter anymore: shumaku trees only flowered in spring.
Ryuan pointed to a small shop along the side of the road. She went inside, and Hugo followed, feeling the light spring breeze fluttering his hair. Ryuan passed her mending basket to an older woman who was working behind the shop counter. The woman retrieved a few coins from her purse and passed them to Ryuan.
Suddenly, the woman’s eyes fixed on Hugo. “Who are you? Wait...” She thought for a moment, then gestured for him to come closer.
Hugo approached the woman, but he hunched his shoulders and looked down, trying to hide his face.
“I remember you,” the woman said. “You’re the boy that Ryuan saved from that warehouse fire, right?”
Hugo looked reflexively at Ryuan in alarm. Ryuan was still calm, but her face clouded over. “Dad’s no good at lying,” she said apologetically through the taramu around her neck. “He told her the truth, I guess.”
The woman noticed their panicked expressions and waved her hand dismissively. She smiled. “Don’t worry, young man. I’m not of a mind to rat you out to the soldiers. Besides, everyone who lives around here are old friends. I wouldn’t be able to live here any longer if I decided to sell out a kid like you.”
The woman was an extremely fast talker. She kept speaking without pausing for air. “I know you’ve been through a lot,” she said kindly. “They took the corpses from the warehouse and piled them up in a wagon; I saw them. They took them away to be burned up, along with a lot of others. I heard that the Talsh dumped their ashes in the canal.”
Hugo’s blood pounded in his ears. He stared at the woman for a long while, then hung his head. He turned his back on Ryuan and the woman and went back outside.
“Where is the warehouse from here?” Hugo asked Ryuan.
Ryuan thought for a moment before answering. She nodded decisively, then pointed. “This way.”
Ryuan didn’t object to leading Hugo to the warehouse, but he felt her disapproval through the taramu. The warehouse was completely destroyed. There was nothing Hugo could do now. Going back now would only bring trouble.
Hugo knew all that, but he was determined to see the warehouse regardless. He followed Ryuan down a narrow street that ran along the canal. The street led to a wider one, and Hugo caught sight of what remained of the warehouse from across a wide stone plaza. The roof was gone, as were the wooden walls. Only the foundation and a few blackened beams remained.
Like the woman had said, there were no corpses. The stone of the street had been washed clean of ash and soot, and the buildings to either side of the warehouse were already being repaired. Anyone who hadn’t witnessed the attack might assume that the warehouse was consumed by a tragic accidental fire.
“I smell parchment,” Ryuan said. “And...wool?”
Hugo stared at the place where the warehouse’s door should be. He heard his sister calling out his name and closed his eyes.
Hugo took a deep breath. He was all alone in the world now. His family and friends were all gone, and he didn’t even know where. The Talsh hadn’t even given them the dignity of a decent burial. Hugo felt numb inside, and thought that he might feel that way forever. Something within him had been seared out by the fire, and only cold ashes remained there now.
Hugo gritted his teeth. Tears overflowed in his eyes. He stayed standing, but his knees shook. “This...is the last time,” he whispered. “It’s the last time I’ll ever cry, dad. I promise.”
Hugo sat in the shadowed gap between two buildings, cradled his head in both hands, and cried until he had no more tears. His family and friends were no longer in this world. His mother, father, sister, grandparents, cousins, childhood friends...Talsh had wiped them off the face of the earth. He was the son of a warrior, one of the Mikado’s Shields, and he’d always expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. But that wasn’t possible anymore. If Hugo wanted to live, he had to become someone else.
Leaning against the cool stone of the wall with tears leaking out of his eyes, Hugo felt his teeth start chattering. It felt like his whole body was threatening to break apart. He hugged himself and searched for a reason to keep on living, aside from hatred and revenge. Revenge was like fire: all-consuming. He didn’t want to end up consumed like the warehouse--like his family. No. His family wouldn’t want that for him, either.
Ryuan was whispering something to him. He felt her hand on his shoulder.
Hugo didn’t push her away. He stared into space, wiping away years as they fell. If he wasn’t so exhausted, he’d be enraged. Was rage a reason to fight, or was it just another road to revenge?
Hugo felt Ryuan’s fingers dig into his shoulder and looked up. She stood above him and gestured around herself. The city was loud, since everyone was rebuilding after the attack, but until that moment Hugo hadn’t heard anything. His grief and anger existed in a world without sound. He stood up shakily, listening to the voices of the surrounding people and carts rolling across the stone street.
He could walk, and he’d been here too long. He focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Pain lanced up his legs with every step, but he ignored it. Ryuan kept her hand on his shoulder and kept whispering soothingly as they walked slowly away from the warehouse.
Hugo didn’t remember how he got back to Ryuan’s house. Ryuan built a fire and brought in water to boil. Hugo watched her, but made no move to help. He gripped his own elbows and leaned heavily against the wall.
Ryuan didn’t try to talk to him. She could sense that he wanted to be left alone. When the water was boiling, she pulled out a crude cup and filled it with hot water, then added a bit of honey. She passed the cup to Hugo.
The fire smoked inside the house and vented through the small chimney hole. Ryuan picked up her fishing basket and went outside. She was probably going to help Yoar bring in his catch for the day.
Hugo sipped at the hot honeyed water, still leaning against the wall. The cup was one that Ryuan had used to store ohru, so the liquid in the cup was unusually sweet. The sun began to set, bathing the room in an amber-colored glow. He smelled roasting fish; Ryuan was probably cooking dinner in the outdoor fire pit. The appetizing smell wafted through the wide-open windows.
Hugo heard the sounds of people coming outside to bring in washing or cook their own supper, but this street seemed quiet after the hustle and bustle near the warehouse. He felt a lot calmer after he finished his honeyed water.
I can’t stay here forever, he thought. I have to leave.
He had to find a way to make a living. He couldn’t keep relying on the kindness of strangers. He shouldn’t be alive; he should have died with his mother and sister. But he was alive, and that meant that he had to earn his own way in the world. If he kept living in this way, he would have to accept that Talsh had already won. Hugo’s life was over, and if he didn’t build a new one out of the ashes, then he’d never have anything ever again.
Hugo remembered where the warehouse was. He looked out the window, eyes tracing the road out of sight. The bright afternoon sun had illuminated his and Ryuan’s path that afternoon. No trace of his family remained in the city anywhere. The soft spring sunlight and the cleaned-up ruin of the warehouse were cruel. The world should be grieving with him, and the city should remember his family, but everyone and everything just went on like normal, as if nothing had happened.
The Talsh killed all the warriors. I understand that. But they killed their children, too...why?
The only reason Hugo could think of was that the Talsh Empire was afraid. They were afraid that children like Hugo would grow up. And if they were afraid of people like Hugo, there must be a reason for it. Hugo could be dangerous to them. He intended to be, when he grew up...but he had to grow up, first.
Hugo might be the last Yogoese warrior left in the imperial city. As long as he was alive, Yogo’s traditions and knowledge wouldn’t die. He would keep those things alive within himself.
Dad, wherever you are...please, watch over me.
Hugo would live as a common person, disguising himself in plain sight, but he would never stop being the person he was born to be. He might not be able to follow in his father’s footsteps, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t make his father proud of him.
Hugo looked down at Ryuan’s dirt floor as the evening shadows lengthened and started thinking about how he would live from now on. He had a lot to think about.
After dinner that night, Hugo removed one of the silver lugals from his belt and put it in front of Yoar. He sat seiza, then put his palms and forehead to the floor, thanking Yoar formally for everything he’d done.
“I thank you for keeping me safe for this long,” Hugo said. “I’m well enough to walk, so I intend to leave tomorrow evening.”
Yoar’s forehead crinkled in a frown. “And where do you plan to go?”
“I don’t know,” Hugo said. “I think I’ll try looking for work.”
Yoar shook his head. “It will be hard for you, cruelly hard. You can walk, but you’re still injured. You should rest here for a little longer.”
Hugo nodded cautiously. He knew how to use a sword and how nobles lived, but he didn’t even know what kinds of jobs were available in the lower city. If Yoar told him that he wasn’t physically ready to work, Hugo would believe him.
“I have two more silver lugals,” Hugo said. “I’ll give them to you if you teach me what I need to know to make a living.”
Yoar rested his chin in his hand. “Hm. You can start out by helping me with my work. Most people don’t want to do it, so there’s not much competition. You and I together should be able to bring in a lot more fish than just me working on my own.”
Ryuan looked between Hugo and her father. She didn’t speak through the taramu, but she seemed troubled. Hugo guessed that she didn’t want him to go. He found it difficult to meet her eyes.
“It might be difficult for me, too, at least for a while,” Yoar said. He stroked his chin and sank deeply into thought. “These are hard times, and the men who work along the canal are used to seeing me working alone. It’s also hard physical work, so you won’t be able to do it right away...” He frowned. “We’ve managed to feed and clothe you so far. If you want to work to help out, I certainly won’t stop you, but...”
Yoar thought for a little longer, then said, “There’s a guy I know, Mar. He owns a tavern, and might hire you on. But it’s hard for me to think of a Mikado’s Shield working in a common tavern. It’s just...tragic.”
Hugo shook his head. “It’s fine. Introduce me to Mar. I’ll try working there.”
“I can tell that you’re serious.” Yoar sighed.
Hugo nodded.
“Well, if you’re going to work in a tavern, you’ll have to get used to being called by your first name, without honorifics,” Yoar said.
“That fine.”
“You say that now, but the people there will call you by a lot of different names--most of them disrespectful and unpleasant. Are you still sure you want to work there?”
“I am.”
“All right,” Yoar said. “But right now, anyone who talked to you would know you were of the warrior class. They might even guess that you’re noble. I’ll teach you how to talk and act, but you’ll be working against your upbringing, and that’s hard. If you slip up, it could be deadly for you.”
Hugo nodded solemnly. “I understand. I’ll do my best to learn.”
“Your posture is too good.” Ryuan spoke through the taramu. “I noticed it when I first saw you. You sit up straight, and you walk with your spine straight, too. No one else I know walks like that.”
Hugo looked between Ryuan and Yoar with a little frown. He remembered thinking that Ryuan’s accent was strange; they must think that his own speech was equally strange. He was prepared to learn, but he hadn’t realized just now different his life and education had been from other people.
Yoar’s gaze dropped to the sword belt Hugo was wearing. He only wore it indoors, but there was always a risk that someone might see it and recognize it. “You should throw that away,” Yoar said.
Yoar was right. Hugo knew that common people weren’t allowed to carry swords. Still, it was hard for him to get rid of it entirely. The sword belt was a gift from his father, and marked him as a warrior.
But he didn’t need the sword belt any longer. It might even get him killed. Someday, I’ll make enough money to buy a new sword belt, and a sword to go with it.
Hugo handed over the sword belt and scabbard to Yoar. “Get rid of these for me, and please don’t tell me where you put them, ever.” He unsheathed the dagger that was still in the sword belt and set it aside.
“You’re keeping that knife? Why?”
Hugo wanted to keep something of his father’s. “I won’t carry it openly. I’ll buy some leather boots and hide it.”
“Leather boots, huh?” Yoar grinned. “But you won’t get away with wearing those, either. The only men who wear boots like that are warriors and ruffians.”
“Then I’ll be a ruffian,” Hugo said. He didn’t actually know what a ruffian was. “And until then, I’ll carry it in a satchel. No one will see.”
Yoar assented, though he still looked troubled. “A lot of the workers sleep together above the tavern. If you stay there, you might be robbed. There are a lot of desperate people, so be careful.”
Hugo blinked. He was learning about the new life he’d chosen. He didn’t think he’d enjoy it. He could no longer see the path in front of him. He’d always envisioned a very specific future life for himself, but now, everything had changed.
Maybe he shouldn’t think about it. He’d survived so far, and there was no telling what tomorrow would bring.
“I’ll be careful,” he said to Yoar. “I promise.”
No comments:
Post a Comment