Those Who Walk the Flame Road
At Mar's tavern, Hugo had slept communally with all the other tavern boys in the rear of their work space, but Tomuran had special lodgings set aside for his wait staff and tavern boys that were segregated by job role.
Hugo didn't have any other place to return to and he needed to collect some things, so he went back to his usual spot in the lodging house attached to Tomuran's restaurant. The inside of the building was sticky and uncomfortable with summer heat.
After taking off his leather boots and his shirt, Hugo lay down on his bed and immediately sprang to his feet when the whip wounds on his back smarted. As he groaned in pain, he heard a door in the hallway open up on creaky hinges and froze.
Ryuan appeared in the hallway, peeking at him with her hand
on the door frame. There was a taramu around her neck.
“Ryuan?” Hugo’s eyes went wide.
Another taramu darted through the ceiling and wound around
Hugo’s neck. Ryuan was at his side instantly; she knelt down and helped him get
his leather boots off.
“Mr. Tomuran told me that people came to the restaurant and
took you. I got worried when I found out you hadn’t come back, so I asked the
taramu to search for you,” she said.
“Oh.”
Mr. Tomuran was a genuinely kind person. Hugo hadn’t known
it at the time he’d started working at his restaurant, but Mr. Tomuran and Yoar
were related. That fact might have helped Hugo get his foot in the door if he’d
known, but there was no need for him to rely on Yoar’s reference. He was a good
worker and Mr. Tomuran was a conscientious, caring boss.
From Ryuan, Hugo learned that Mr. Tomuran had lost track of
him after he was taken away by the peacekeeping officials. He hadn’t known how
badly Hugo was being treated, but he grew concerned when Hugo didn’t return
after a few days and asked the neighbors and Hugo’s friends if they knew of his
whereabouts.
“Sorry,” Hugo said reflexively. “I didn’t want to make
anyone worry.”
Ryuan smiled kindly. “You’ve had a rough time of it.” Tears
glittered in her eyes.
Hugo looked away, frowning. “I’m fine. Really.” He got up and
prepared to leave. Ryuan didn’t try to stop him, but she followed him down the
hallway and got the door for him when it was clear that he was headed outside.
Hugo wondered how long Ryuan had been here. The bedding in
his room was clean; he didn’t remember washing it recently, so she must have
done it. There was a bucket of water here, too, and clean bandages. Maybe Ryuan
was expecting to have to patch him up, or maybe she was just preparing for any
eventuality.
“Are you hurt?” Ryuan asked as they walked. “Your friends
are worried, too. I’ve heard about Talsh’s interrogation methods.”
Hugo said nothing in reply. He didn’t want to show Ryuan the
deep marks on his back; he didn’t want to see her pitying him when he didn’t
deserve it. But he also knew that he couldn’t just leave like he wanted to. He
wasn’t strong enough yet, and Ryuan would keep worrying about him.
“I…” Hugo thought about what he should say. “I appreciate
your concern, but I really don’t want you to worry about me too much, all right?
I don’t want you to get mixed up with me again. Seems like I only cause trouble.”
Ryuan nodded. “I can’t promise not to worry… but I’ll try
not to be overbearing, at least.”
At her nod, Hugo turned around and returned to his room;
there were already supplies for treating wounds there. Ryuan followed him. Hugo
sat down on the floor near the bucket and rags and removed his soiled jacket
and shirt, revealing the whip marks criss-crossing his back.
Ryuan gasped.
“It’s okay; they’re not bleeding anymore,” Hugo said. “They’re
mostly scabbed over by now.”
Ryuan shook her head. “They’re still bleeding. I think the
wounds are infected. I’ll wash them. It’ll sting. After that I’ll put some salve
on them and bandage them properly.”
The sun was going down. The last light of the sun slanted
through Hugo’s western-facing window. Hugo sat cross-legged on his bedding in a
comfortable position while Ryuan treated his injuries. The first touch of the rag
sent a rush of pain through his entire body, but he could tell the difference
when his wounds were finally clean. He started sweating; Ryuan mopped that up
with another clean rag. By the time she applied salve, he’d stopped sweating and the pain in his back was dull, not sharp and piercing.
After his back was treated, Ryuan spent some time cleaning
the superficial cuts on his arms. There was also a shallow wound on his lower
stomach that was scabbed over but probably a little infected; there was a red
rash around the scab, and when Ryuan cleaned it he had to grit his teeth so
that he wouldn’t cry out.
It took more than an hour for Ryuan to complete her ministrations.
The world outside the window was dark. She helped Hugo lie down on his bed so
that he wouldn’t brush against the bandages on his back. He stretched out and
took a deep, cleansing breath.
“Are you hungry?” Ryuan asked. “If you write a note for me,
I can go down to the kitchen and get you some tea and rice gruel.”
“All right.”
Ryuan fetched paper and a pen from a desk in the corner, but
Hugo didn’t write anything. He stayed still with his head on his pillow. He was
hungry, yes, but he wasn’t in any hurry to eat. He wanted to stay like this for
a while.
The birds outside the window twittered sleepily to one
another, breaking the silence in the room.
“I, uh… I went to see my house today,” Hugo said. In fits
and starts, Hugo told Ryuan what had happened to him after he was released from
the peacekeeping office. He told her about wandering for two days without food
and being taken in by Shigan and his wife. He even told her about his interrogation
and the Talsh soldier. Having decided to speak, he found it impossible to stop
until he’d told her absolutely everything.
Ryuan listened without asking anything. She barely moved.
Hugo was scarcely aware of the passage of time. He only
noticed that it was full night when it became difficult to see Ryuan, who was
still sitting next to his bed. He hadn’t spoken to anyone like this in so long.
Talking about it all dulled the edges of his sharper memories. The
more he talked, the easier it was to keep talking. His own voice sounded strange
in his ears.
When he stopped speaking, Ryuan reached her hand out of the
enveloping blue-purple shadows and squeezed Hugo’s shoulder, avoiding his
wounds, as if she were trying to encourage a child. The skin of her hands was
dry and cracked, but her grip was firm. “Hugo,” she said through the taramu.
“Yeah?”
“I know you wanted to be an Imperial Guard when you were a
kid. Did you ever want to be anything else?”
Cool wind from the window played over Hugo’s warm forehead.
His fever was spiking again. He wanted to answer Ryuan, but it took him a
moment to decide what to say. She rubbed soothing circles into the base of his neck
while waiting for a reply.
“I don’t want to be an Imperial Guard anymore.” Putting that
thought into words made it feel truer, somehow. Even if it was what he wanted, that
was impossible now. He’d wanted to be like his father, the embodiment of a
protector, but there was no longer anything for him to protect.
“All I want now is to work so that the people of Yogo—our people—can
be happy.”
Ryuan stopped rubbing his neck. “Then keep working at Tomuran’s,” she said. “If you stay
there long enough and learn all you can, Mr. Tomuran will help you establish a
branch of the restaurant in the city that you’ll be able to manage yourself. If
you do that, you’ll be able to employ people who need work and give the needy a
roof over their heads."
Hugo’s eyes went wide. Was that Ryuan’s idea of a good life,
a life where he could help people? She wasn’t wrong to think that way, not entirely,
but she was thinking on too small a scale. One business
couldn’t solve all the city’s problems, to say nothing of the nation itself.
Shigan had asked Hugo why he hadn’t tried opening his own
business. Mr. Tomuran probably thought that helping Hugo do that would be just and right, for Hugo and for other people. Hugo considered the idea of owning a
business again and couldn’t hold the image in his head. It was a mirage, like
the rest of the post-war city. Any business he opened wouldn’t be real to him.
“You’re joking, right?” Hugo asked.
“What? No.”
“No one… why doesn’t anyone understand what I want to do?”
Hugo muttered.
Ryuan looked at him in puzzlement.
“Going on with an ordinary life in Hoshiro under Talsh rule
is the same as surrender,” Hugo said. “Why should I work to make the city
better for Talsh? They stole my home and murdered my family—and now you say I
should give them my labor and productivity as well, so that they can grind me
down and make me helpless? No! Why would you think I’d ever agree to something
like that?!”
Ryuan didn’t say anything. She sat with Hugo, looking at him
with her concern plain in her expression. She shrugged her shoulders, then said
through the taramu, “We can’t change where we are or what’s happened to us in
the past.” She smiled bitterly. “But we can still change the future for the better.
If we do nothing, then nothing changes. We’re here, for better or worse, and we
have to live where we are.” She sighed, then put the lid on her jar of salve
and tied it shut. Then she stood up.
“Write that note for me. I’m going to the kitchen to get you
something to eat. You don’t need to tell anyone else that you’re here yet if
you don’t want, but you must eat something.”
Hugo scrawled out a brief message to the chefs in the
kitchen and passed it to Ryuan. She left the room with the note clutched in her
hand. The room seemed much smaller and darker with her gone.
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