Shadow Magic (29 page)

It was the most curious sensation to be surrounded by people and yet still feel so utterly alone.

“Are you all right?” Kouje asked me, the question soft between the two of us.

“Just the heat,” I lied, knowing that Kouje would guess at the truth behind my words well enough. If I’d felt confident enough to explain it properly, perhaps I would have tried. Perhaps Kouje understood them anyway, and that was why he’d made the gesture in the first place. Whatever the reason, I found myself grateful beyond words, and I held on to his hand with both of mine as we stepped inside. Things were less lonely with Kouje at my side.

The restaurant was a small but friendly-looking affair, with a counter for customers who were only interested in drinking, and a
kitchen just behind it that emitted puffs of steam and mouthwatering smells in equal measure. It was also very crowded, so that Kouje and I had to pause for a moment to get our bearings once more. It had been so long since we’d been in a place with so many people that I believed for a moment we’d almost forgotten the way of it. Then I saw the consternation on Kouje’s face pass, and his grip on my hands relaxed. I allowed myself to breathe in deeply and concentrate not on the shouting or the jostling of the restaurant’s patrons, but the wonderful smells emanating from the kitchen.

Jiang and Inokichi were already sitting at a table near the back. When Kichi saw us, he stood up and waved us over.

“We thought you’d changed your minds,” he said. “Which would’ve been pretty stupid of you, really. I’d have to question your sanity in turning down a free meal like this one.”

“My sister’s just a little dizzy from the heat,” Kouje said, as politely as I’d heard him yet. The prospect of the noodles must have been affecting him just as it was affecting me.

“The two of you are awfully private with one another,” Jiang said. “Used to living on your own, are you?”

“Something like that,” Kouje said, and he stopped just short of the table.

I looked up, to see what was bothering him, and then I understood. Jiang and Inokichi had sat down across from one another, so that there was no space for Kouje to sit next to me as he normally did. I let go of his hand, and made as if to sit down first to set him at ease. Perhaps I would have to speak to him later, just to reassure him that he did not need to be so protective there as he was in the palace.

“I’ll sit there,” Kouje said, ducking around me when I would have sat next to Kichi. “I like to watch them make the noodles,” he offered by way of explanation, nodding to me and looking at no one.

I took my seat next to Jiang, remembering to smooth my rough skirts underneath me, and offered him a small smile, as if to acknowledge the common affliction we shared: companions with a vein of eccentricity run through the center of them.

It wasn’t entirely fair to Kouje, but I was certain he’d understand. I would have done anything to ease the tension between us.

“We didn’t want to take the pleasure of ordering away from you,” Kichi said, “so we waited. As long as you make it quick, we should be
out of here with enough time to pass through the border and still make it to the next village before nightfall.”

“There’ve been reports of highwaymen out in full force now that everyone’s caught on the roads between checkpoints,” Jiang clarified.

Kouje sat up a little straighter, listening closely to memorize the information for later. He told Inokichi our preferences for noodles, and even smiled at the joke Kichi made about men who liked their noodles cold before he went off to order.

“Well,” Jiang said. “Silence. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It has its merits,” Kouje agreed.

Things were a little less tense than when Kichi was around to say anything and everything that popped into his head, but it was hard, too, not knowing what to say while Jiang made no effort to hold up any kind of conversation.

I was just trying to think of something—anything, really—to break the silence when I felt something brush against my leg. Thinking immediately of the catfish, I swatted it away with considerable panic.

“My apologies,” Jiang said, looking not at all alarmed by the fact that I’d just thought his hand was a rat or worse.

Kouje narrowed his eyes, but didn’t say anything.

“It’s very kind of you to help us across the border this way,” I said, before Kouje had time to ask what, exactly, Jiang was apologizing for. I had no skill in conversation, at least none that would help me here, unless Jiang wished to know the seven accepted ways to write a poem about nature, or the preferred variety of tea they were taking in the capital these days. It was all the more reason for me to practice, since it seemed I would need the skills sooner rather than later.

Jiang shrugged. He had a look in his eyes that was mostly friendly, I thought, but with a thread of something else that I didn’t entirely recognize. It was like coming up against a word I didn’t know in country dialect—a foreign object in the middle of what should have been familiar territory.

“We’re helping each other,” he said. “It’s the neighborly thing to do.”

I didn’t entirely know what to say to that, so I nodded instead. Across the table from us, Kouje cracked his knuckles. I wondered if they were sore from the strain of holding the reins every day, and if we shouldn’t switch off eventually, as equals might have.

I resolved to ask him the next chance we got.

Kichi returned shortly thereafter to put us out of our awkward misery, bearing a tray with four bowls of noodles, one steaming hot and three cold.

“I can’t believe you’re eating hot noodles on a day like today, blossom, but who am I to argue? I got you some water as well, since your fine strapping figure of a brother seems concerned for your constitution in this heat, and I for one don’t blame him.”

I took the water from him, too grateful to be embarrassed, and downed the glass in greedy, messy gulps.

When I’d finished, there was water on my chin, and dripping down my front. Kichi stared at me in plain amusement, while Kouje looked down, hiding his own smile but not before I’d seen it. I wiped my mouth, feeling shy but much less thirsty than I had a moment ago.

“Well,” Kichi said. “Eat up, then.”

Conversation died down as everyone dug into his meal with equal enthusiasm. Kouje and I hadn’t had any breakfast to speak of—a fact I was made all the more aware of now that I was eating, and eating something that I felt I’d been craving since the night I’d left the palace, though of course I knew that was impossible.

There was another moment when I thought that I might have discerned a rat against my leg, and I twitched, bumping the table surface from below and nearly knocking Kichi’s bowl over. Jiang apologized, and I apologized, and Kouje narrowed his eyes further, looking as though he’d found something sour at the bottom of his noodle dish.

I was the first to finish lunch. Once my sticks had scraped the bottom of the bowl, I put them down and tried not to look too longingly in the direction of anyone else’s meal, especially not Kouje’s, since I knew that he would have given me whatever he had left without thinking twice about it.

“Want another?” Inokichi asked, grinning like a monkey.

“I couldn’t,” I said then, trying to muster more conviction, “really. Thank you, Inokichi.”

“So polite,” Kichi said, clacking his tongue against his teeth. “Man oh man. You’ve got yourself some sister.”

I folded my hands in my lap and sat very still, listening to my companions slurp their noodles, and grateful that Jiang’s hands were
occupied with his sticks. I ought to have savored my noodles more, made them last, but I’d been too hungry. At least, I thought, I could let Kouje savor his without worry or anger spoiling the taste.

Kouje finished at about the same time as Jiang and Inokichi did. “So,” Kichi began, talkative once more now that his mouth was no longer busy with eating, “guess we’d better move on. Don’t want to get caught outside at night, ’specially when a lady like that’s riding with you.”

Kouje murmured his agreements. I would have done the same, save for the fluttering touch at my leg. Jiang’s hands were under the table again, and it was growing harder and harder to believe he was touching me by accident.

My realization must have dawned on my face at about the same time Jiang gave my thigh a—what had he called it? Neighborly?—squeeze. I couldn’t stop myself, and Kouje, who knew my face better than anyone, saw it at once.

He stood so quickly he nearly knocked the bench he’d been sitting on over, and Inokichi with it.

“Hey, hey,” Inokichi said, struggling to keep his balance. He held up his hands, the only one at the table, now, who didn’t know what was going on. “Did you see a rat or something? I swear, they don’t make any difference to how the food tastes—”

“May I speak with you outside for a moment?” Kouje said, ignoring Inokichi completely. His eyes were burning.

“Stop,” I said, reaching out toward him, but Jiang was already standing. When he didn’t slouch, he was a little taller than Kouje, and he’d raised himself to his full height.

The other patrons of the restaurant had all gone quiet, save for a whisper here and there. This sort of thing must have happened quite often in a place like this, though it had never happened to me before. We were making a scene. The last thing we needed was to be apprehended by local authorities so close to the border crossing—one which my brother’s loyal retainers were patrolling at this very moment, looking for me.

“My pleasure,” Jiang said.

“I’ll only be a moment,” Kouje said, turning to me, his expression softening. “Stay here.”

Suddenly, I was outraged. Had I asked to be defended? Couldn’t this have been resolved some other way? My cheeks were burning hot; I was dizzy from anger and desperation and the long day’s ride in the hot sun. I reached out to catch at Kouje’s sleeve—perhaps I meant to command him to stay, which admittedly might have called further attention to us—but I was too slow. Already, he was stepping past the colored banners in the doorway, ducking outside into the bright sun.

“Traveling companions, huh?” Inokichi said nervously, craning his neck to look after Kouje and Jiang. “Can’t travel without ’em, but sometimes you wonder if being lonely isn’t preferable to being…”

“Stuck in a noodle shop while your brother defends your honor on the streets,” I supplied.

“Yeah,” Kichi said. “Something like that. Though, of course, your situation and mine aren’t exactly the same.”

I wondered if, all this time, Inokichi was the easygoing one—if he was the one who suffered from Jiang’s more volatile nature—all the while putting on a good show. Was Jiang in the habit of doing this sort of thing often? Was Kouje in danger?

Likely not, I thought. Likely, Jiang had no idea the hornet’s nest he’d just stepped into the middle of.

And, just like that, after a shared glance of mutual panic, Inokichi and I rushed outside into the street, with all the patrons of the noodle shop whistling and howling and crowding out after us.

The first thing I could think, upon seeing the scene before me, was that this wasn’t the way Kouje usually fought.

He was a graceful fighter, calm and poised, taught by the same master as my brother and therefore in some ways stylistically similar. Yet, at the same time, Kouje was a vastly different man from Iseul when each had a sword in his hand. Both were stubborn, yes, and inexorable, and both grew fire-eyed and tiger-fierce, but Iseul became a punishing god, a vengeful deity. Kouje became the paragon of sword fighting, a man whose sword was merely one more extension of his body. Both fought uncommonly well, but in my most secret of hearts, I knew which style I preferred—Kouje’s quiet strength over Iseul’s wildfire fury.

This, however, was not a sword fight in the palace. I was not sitting some safe distance away, watching two men spar with wooden swords. Rather, I was standing a bare foot from Kouje as he sparred with
Jiang—or rather, as he toyed with him. They were hardly matched: Kouje, who had trained in the palace, and Jiang, a common merchant. Each wild swing Jiang attempted, Kouje easily ducked, whereas every blow Kouje dealt hit its intended mark.

It was a side of Kouje I’d never seen. I didn’t even know how to stop him—after all, in the crowd that had formed, I couldn’t even use his real name without giving us away. In his current state, too, I couldn’t trust that he would respond to the aliases we’d arranged privately between us. I felt helpless.

Kichi swore. He stood a good head and shoulders above everyone else in the crowd, which had gathered round to jeer and holler instead of do anything useful, like stop the fighting. I thought that perhaps, if Kichi had wanted to wade through the crowd to get to Jiang, it wouldn’t have been much of a problem for him. It wouldn’t have been nearly so easy for me.

Kouje was handling himself quite well at the moment—it was obvious to anyone who knew what he was looking at that Jiang didn’t stand a chance—but I couldn’t just do nothing and wait for Kichi to change his mind and join the fray. Or worse, for the town’s authorities to arrive and adjudicate the fight. I threw myself forward into the crowd, too worried now to wonder about offending anyone if I jostled or pushed them. Not for the first time, I cursed my size—for although it was helpful in the disguise we’d manufactured, it made me feel futile and small when surrounded by so many able-bodied men and women. An elbow connected with my side; another narrowly missed my nose. I nearly cried out in frustration, still buried in the crush of bodies that had poured out of the other shops surrounding the noodle house, and hearing nothing but the two men scuffle and the roaring approval of the crowds.

I couldn’t get past.

“Hey!” A voice in the crowd shouted, slightly louder than the rest. It wasn’t a very cultured voice, but it was the sort of voice men listened to all the same. “Hey now, make way for the little blossom!”

Inokichi’s voice rang out over the heads of the onlookers. I had just enough time to prevent my knees from going weak with gratitude before my way became just a little clearer, and I hurled myself gratefully through the gap, running toward Kouje with a fervor I’d never felt before, as hot as fever in my blood. Someone in the crowd laughed as I
burst through, as though this were a fascinating new development and their entertainment had just become that much more diverting.