Find Me by Brien Feathers

Author:Brien Feathers [Brien Feathers]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Brien Feathers
Published: 2024-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

It was some hours’ ride to Hotarubi, the heart of the Satsuma province, and Lord Isamu’s fortress, Enju, was visible on the naked peak to the north. The road from the town to the fortress was swept and fenced with bamboo like the snow tunnels of Hoshinoya.

The townspeople bowed to their lord as the entourage passed by and the behemoth gates of the fortress were open once they reached the top.

Sora was on the lord’s tier of the layered fortress, under physician’s care and not taking many visitors. Ayame didn’t request to see him once Lord Kyuzo spoke to him and came back saddened.

‘He’s angry and bitter,’ he’d said. ‘It’s better we give him time to heal.’

For the next few days, Ayame made a home of the mountaintop fortress and the view of brown stone walls outside the windows. The courtyard hadn’t livened any since she saw it last, and her spirit sagged, missing home, the open valley of cherry trees, and the evergreen mountains to the north.

Lord Kyuzo was gone most of the day. Once she intruded on his meeting with Lord Isamu and his vassals. All men pausing their speaking to frown at her, it’d been clear that was no place for a woman. So she left and hadn’t tried looking for her lord again. When he came, he came, but much was on his mind which he didn’t share with her.

Business at Enju was conducted to the sound of a copper gong struck with a wooden hammer. A ring for morning meal, a ring for lunch, a ring for dinner. The wooden clappers were for the bujin, marking training hours and change of shifts, she surmised, and the servants moved to their own tune as well.

Out of place, Ayame had nothing to do but eat, rest, and take a stroll in the sightless courtyard. She sometimes looked up at Sora’s windows, but they were always closed.

She wanted to know when they would be going home, but considering all including the weather, she wasn’t certain that they should travel at all. Lord Kyuzo had processed the news of their child and her truth rather quickly, but she wondered if he was digressing as his demeanor grew cold and unreadable.

On the fifth night, he didn’t come at all. It was well past dawn when Ayame heard the door slide on its track and pretended to be asleep. She was upset that he may be drunk and spent the night womanizing Lord Isamu’s many courtesans. He’d killed his emperor for her, but that was before she claimed to be carrying a child from a man who couldn’t sire one and topped it off with how she was a spirit. A human mind had a way of whittling down information into a shape it wanted to see. She wouldn’t put it past any man to simply think her mad at best, and a liar at worst.

He moved about the room, shuffling things Ayame couldn’t see. Then she felt his warmth as he came to sit by her mat.

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