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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